Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern access to and use of the Booklify appointment-management platform and related services (the “Service”), provided by Booklify (“Booklify”, “we”, “us” or “our”). By creating an account, accepting these Terms in the platform, or using the Service, you agree to them. If you are agreeing on behalf of a practice or organisation, you confirm you are authorised to bind that organisation, and that organisation is responsible for its staff’s use of the Service.

1. Who these Terms apply to

• Practices — healthcare practices (for example optometry, medical and allied-health clinics) that subscribe to the Service, and the administrators, receptionists and practitioners they give accounts to (“staff”).
• Patients — individuals who use a practice’s online booking portal to book and manage their own appointments, or on whose behalf a practice uses the Service.

Sections marked practices only apply to practices and their staff. Everything else applies to everyone. Where these Terms and a separate written agreement between Booklify and a practice conflict, the written agreement prevails for that practice.

2. The Service

Booklify is a multi-tenant, cloud-based platform that lets practices schedule appointments; manage patients, services, locations and practitioners; send appointment confirmations, reminders, recall invitations and follow-up messages by email and SMS; and accept online bookings from patients. We may add, change or remove features over time to improve the Service.

Booklify is a scheduling and communication tool only. It is not a medical device, a clinical or electronic health record, or a substitute for professional clinical judgement, advice, diagnosis or treatment. Practices remain solely responsible for the care they provide, for their clinical records, and for the accuracy of the information they enter.

The staff assistant. The Service includes an assistant that answers staff questions about their own practice’s data using a third-party language model (see our Privacy Policy, section 8). It is artificial intelligence, and the platform says so where it is used. Its answers are drawn from the practice’s records at the time of the question and may be incomplete or wrong; they are information to help staff, never advice, and never clinical advice. Staff must verify anything they act on. The assistant looks information up and can propose a booking or a new appointment time, but it never makes a change itself: nothing is saved until a staff member reviews the proposal and confirms it, and it makes no decisions about any patient.

3. Accounts and security

• You must provide accurate information when registering and keep it up to date.
• You are responsible for keeping your login details confidential and for all activity under your account. Practices are responsible for the accounts they create for staff, for the access levels they grant, and for removing access when someone leaves.
• You must tell us promptly of any unauthorised access or suspected security breach.
• We may suspend or deactivate accounts that are inactive, in breach of these Terms, or where suspension is necessary to protect the Service or other users.

4. Practice responsibilities (practices only)

As between you and Booklify, you are the party responsible for your patients’ personal and health information: the APP entity under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) in Australia, the agency under the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020 in New Zealand, and the responsible party under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) in South Africa. You must:

• collect patient information lawfully, tell patients how it will be used, and obtain any consents or authorities your law requires — including for storing patient information in the Service and for contacting patients through it;
• keep patient records for the periods your professional and health-records laws require, and export what you need before your subscription ends (section 9);
• enter accurate patient and practice data, and configure reminders, recalls and notifications appropriately for your patients;
• send only messages that are lawful and relate to the care and scheduling services you provide. Recall and follow-up messages may be electronic marketing under the Spam Act 2003 (Cth), the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 (NZ), section 69 of POPIA and the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 (ZA): send them only to patients who are entitled to receive them, and honour every opt-out. The Service includes an unsubscribe link in every recall email and a STOP reply for SMS, and records the patient’s choice; you must not work around either;
• use the staff assistant only for your practice’s own operations, verify its answers before acting on them, and tell your staff that it is artificial intelligence;
• respond to your patients’ requests to access, correct or delete their information — the Service lets you do this directly — and tell us if you need our help to comply.

5. How we handle practice data (practices only)

This section, together with our Privacy Policy, is the written agreement under which we process patient information on your behalf (a service provider under the APPs and the Health Information Privacy Code, and an operator under section 21 of POPIA). We will:

• process patient information only to provide the Service to you and on your instructions given through the platform, and never for our own marketing;
• keep it confidential and secure with the measures described in the Privacy Policy;
• use the sub-processors listed in the Privacy Policy, some of which are outside Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. By using the Service you authorise those transfers, which we make under contractual protections as the Privacy Policy describes;
• tell you without undue delay if we become aware of a breach affecting your data, and help you meet your own notification duties (section 22 of POPIA, the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, and Part 6 of the Privacy Act 2020);
• return or delete your data at the end of your subscription as set out in section 9.

6. Patient bookings and portal accounts

When you book through a practice’s online portal, you are making a request to that practice. The practice may confirm, reschedule or cancel appointments under its own policies. Booklify facilitates the booking but is not a party to the relationship between you and your practice, and is not responsible for the practice accepting, honouring or cancelling any appointment, or for the care provided.

A portal account is yours alone. If you book for a child or another person in your care, you confirm you have the authority to do so and to receive messages about their appointments. Appointment confirmations and reminders are part of the service you have asked the practice for; recall and follow-up messages you can opt out of at any time using the link or reply in the message, or from your portal profile, without affecting your appointments. The Privacy Policy explains how to access or correct your information.

7. Acceptable use

You must not:

• use the Service for any unlawful, harmful, misleading or fraudulent purpose;
• access, or attempt to access, data belonging to another practice or any account you are not authorised to use;
• interfere with, disrupt, probe or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service or its infrastructure, or use automated means to make requests at a rate beyond ordinary use;
• send unsolicited marketing, spam or any communication not permitted by law through the Service;
• copy, modify, reverse-engineer, resell or create derivative works from the Service except to the extent the law allows;
• upload malicious code or use the Service in a way that could damage or overload it.

8. Fees and payment (practices only)

Access to the Service may be subject to subscription fees, and some features (for example SMS messages) are charged per use or from a prepaid balance, as set out in your plan or order. Unless stated otherwise, fees are payable in advance in the currency shown, are exclusive of GST, VAT and other applicable taxes, and are non-refundable except as required by law. Card payments are handled by our payment provider; we do not store card details. We may change our fees on reasonable prior notice, effective from your next billing period. Usage allowances that come with a plan (for example assistant questions) are limits, not guarantees of a particular volume.

9. Data ownership, export and deletion

As between Booklify and a practice, the practice owns the patient and practice data it enters into the Service and grants Booklify the right to host, process and transmit that data as needed to provide the Service. Our handling of personal information is described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

When a subscription ends, we will make the practice’s data available for export for a reasonable period (at least 30 days) and then delete or de-identify it, subject to any retention the law requires of us. Practices are responsible for keeping their own copies of records their health-records laws require them to retain.

10. Availability and changes

We aim to keep the Service available and reliable but do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation. The Service may be unavailable during maintenance or because of factors beyond our reasonable control. We may modify, suspend or discontinue features from time to time, and will give practices reasonable notice of changes that materially reduce the Service.

11. Third-party services

The Service relies on third-party providers — cloud hosting, database, email and SMS delivery, payment processing, and the language-model provider behind the staff assistant — and may integrate with services a practice chooses to connect, such as a calendar provider. Those providers’ own terms govern their services. Where a practice connects a third-party service, it is responsible for that connection and for the data it chooses to synchronise.

12. Intellectual property

Booklify and its licensors own all intellectual property rights in the Service, including its software, design and branding. Nothing in these Terms transfers those rights to you. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service while these Terms are in force.

13. Your statutory rights

Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law, the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 (NZ), the Fair Trading Act 1986 (NZ), the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 (ZA), or any other law that cannot lawfully be excluded. Where the law lets us limit our liability for breach of such a guarantee, our liability is limited, at our option, to re-supplying the Service or paying the cost of having it re-supplied. If you use the Service as a consumer, sections 14 and 15 apply only to the extent the law allows.

14. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and we exclude all implied warranties. We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for loss of profits, revenue, data or goodwill, arising out of or in connection with the Service. Subject to section 13, our total aggregate liability to a practice arising out of or in connection with these Terms is limited to the fees that practice paid for the Service in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the liability.

We are not responsible for clinical decisions; for the accuracy of data entered by practices or patients; for missed, late or attended appointments; for the content of, or any reliance on, the staff assistant’s answers; or for the consequences of messages, or failed message delivery, sent through the Service.

15. Indemnity (practices only)

You agree to indemnify Booklify against claims, losses and costs arising from your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the Service, or your failure to obtain necessary patient consents or to comply with the privacy, health-records, consumer and electronic-messaging laws that apply to you.

16. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Service at any time; a practice may cancel its subscription as set out in its plan. We may suspend or terminate access if you materially breach these Terms, fail to pay fees when due, or where required to protect the Service or comply with law. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination — including sections 5, 9, 12, 13, 14 and 15 — continue to apply.

17. Changes to these Terms and notices

We may update these Terms from time to time. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page shows when they were last revised. We will give reasonable notice of material changes through the platform (which may ask you to accept the updated Terms before continuing) or by email to the address on your account. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance. Notices from us are given electronically through the platform or by email.

18. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand, and you submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New Zealand. This does not affect any right you have to bring a claim in your own country, and nothing in these Terms limits the non-excludable rights of a person in Australia or South Africa under their own consumer, privacy or health-records laws. If you have a complaint, please contact us first (section 19) and we will work with you to resolve it.

19. Contact us

Questions about these Terms can be sent to support@booklify.co.za. Questions about personal information go to our Privacy Officer at privacy@booklify.co.za.