Terms of use

1. About these terms and the service operator

These Terms of Use form the agreement for access to and use of OrthoLog. “OrthoLog”, “the app” and “the service” include the web application, installable PWA, desktop or Android packages, documentation and associated website. “RQAI”, “we”, “us” and “our” mean the independent software project operating OrthoLog from England under the RQAI project name. RQAI is not represented in these terms as a registered company, healthcare provider, public authority, regulator or professional body.

The contact channel for the service operator is hello@rqai.co.uk. Do not send patient information, screenshots containing patient information, API credentials, authentication tokens, signing keys or vault passphrases to this address.

2. Eligibility, capacity and professional status

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of agreeing to these terms. The app is intended for healthcare professionals and trainees keeping their own personal record of operative experience and learning. It is not designed for patients, children, members of the public, employers assessing staff, or organisations operating a shared clinical database.

You must not claim that use of OrthoLog proves registration, competence, credentialing, completion of training or compliance with any professional standard.

3. Acceptance, records and later versions

The app presents a versioned acceptance screen before first use. By completing every acknowledgement and selecting “Accept and continue”, you agree to these terms and confirm that you have read the Privacy Notice and AI Transparency Notice. The version and acceptance time are stored on that device. They are not intended to be sent to RQAI.

Clearing browser or app data may remove that record and require acceptance again. A material change may result in a new version and renewed acceptance. Continued use after renewed acceptance is agreement to the updated documents. If you do not agree, do not create, unlock or use a vault.

4. Free service and no service level commitment

OrthoLog is currently offered free of charge. There is no subscription, guaranteed support response, service-level agreement, uptime commitment, guaranteed maintenance period or promise that a particular feature, provider, model or download will remain available. A free service does not remove rights that cannot lawfully be excluded.

You should keep independent, verified and authorised copies of information you must retain. Do not make OrthoLog the sole repository for evidence whose loss would materially affect training, employment or professional standing.

5. Intended purpose

OrthoLog is personal documentation and education software. Its intended purpose is to help an adult healthcare professional record operative experience, organise reflections and learning, attach supporting material where lawful, review descriptive statistics and prepare user-reviewed exports.

• It is not an official clinical record or part of a medical record.
• It is not intended to diagnose, prevent, monitor, predict, prognose, treat or alleviate disease or injury.
• It is not intended for triage, treatment selection, implant selection, patient monitoring, prescribing, clinical calculation or emergency use.
• It is not intended to make or materially influence clinical, employment, training, credentialing, regulatory or insurance decisions.
• It is not a medical device or clinical decision-support system for its stated intended purpose.

6. Independence and external organisations

OrthoLog is an independent product. It is not an official service of any health service, hospital, employer, university, regulator, training programme or operative-logbook provider. References to general workflows or external export formats are descriptive interoperability references only. They do not imply affiliation, endorsement, certification, approval or guaranteed compatibility.

7. Licence and permitted personal use

Subject to these terms, you receive a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the current release for your own personal professional documentation. You may install it on devices you control and create lawful backups for your own use.

You may not resell or sublicense the service; operate it as a hosted service for others; remove legal notices; falsely attribute the product; reverse engineer it except where a mandatory law permits; or use the service, its interfaces or outputs to build a competing extraction service in breach of applicable rights or third-party terms.

8. Your organisation’s authority comes first

Using software does not create authority to process confidential information. Before entering, importing, photographing, attaching, exporting, synchronising or sending any patient-related information, you must establish that the action is permitted by applicable law, common-law confidentiality, professional duties, your employment or training arrangements and the policies of the relevant organisation.

Where required, obtain written approval from the relevant information-governance, data-protection, cyber-security, clinical-safety, training or Caldicott function. If local policy prohibits personal devices, external AI, consumer cloud storage or unapproved software, you must follow that policy and not use the relevant OrthoLog feature.

9. Patient information and special-category data

Safeguarding patient information is the user’s duty. Health information is highly sensitive and may be special-category personal data. OrthoLog has not been commissioned, clinically deployed or independently approved as a system for identifiable patient data in the UK, EU or many other countries. Without explicit organisational approval following appropriate legal, information-governance and security assessment, use only fictitious, mock or genuinely non-identifying information.

You or the relevant organisation must determine the controller/processor roles, lawful basis and any special-category condition, confidentiality justification, transparency arrangements, retention schedule, access controls, processor contracts, international-transfer mechanism and whether a data protection impact assessment or equivalent local assessment is required. RQAI does not supply those permissions.

10. Identifiers, pseudonymisation and re-identification risk

Patient name entry is not provided and patient names must not be entered elsewhere. MRN or hospital number, NHS number and date of birth are optional. Leave them blank wherever possible and use a clearly marked, non-identifying local reference where a reference is needed. It is not a genuine hospital identifier and must not be represented as one.

If your organisation has expressly authorised a real identifier, it must remain encrypted inside the vault and hidden except when its use is necessary and authorised. Do not place real patient information in ordinary notes, reflections, filenames, links, screenshots or exports. Encryption does not anonymise an identifier or make otherwise unauthorised processing lawful.

Removing direct identifiers does not necessarily anonymise a case. Procedure, date, hospital, age, rare condition, complication, image, consultant, follow-up narrative or a combination of facts may permit identification. Encryption, masking, local references and pseudonymisation reduce risk but do not remove data-protection or confidentiality duties.

11. Images, attachments and source material

You must have authority to capture, copy and store every theatre list, operation note, screenshot, photograph, PDF, spreadsheet, link and attachment. Avoid faces, names, labels, wristbands, addresses, barcodes, QR codes and unrelated records. Crop or redact before import where lawful, and verify that redaction is irreversible before treating material as de-identified.

Delete source material when it is no longer required under the applicable retention rule. Do not assume that deleting an item in OrthoLog deletes copies in Photos, Files, downloads, backups, Google Drive, email, clipboard history or an AI provider’s systems.

12. Manual entry, spreadsheet import and duplicate handling

Manual and spreadsheet workflows are processed locally in the current app, but imported data may be incomplete, malformed, shifted into the wrong column, duplicated or assigned to the wrong case. You must inspect every draft. An import result is not evidence that the source was accurate, authorised or complete.

13. Optional AI extraction

AI extraction is optional. When you deliberately invoke it and confirm the disclosure, the selected image and an extraction instruction are sent directly from your device to the provider chosen in Settings—currently Google Gemini, Groq or OpenAI—using your own API credential. Provider terms, account settings, retention, security, content policies, subprocessors and transfer arrangements apply.

Do not submit patient-related material unless the provider, endpoint, account tier, contractual terms, data controls and transfer are specifically approved for that information. A consumer or free account may not provide the safeguards required by your organisation.

14. AI output and mandatory human review

AI output is a draft. It may omit a case, combine patients, misread handwriting, transpose identifiers, infer unsupported values, misinterpret abbreviations, invent details or produce inconsistent results. Model names, behaviour and availability may change without an OrthoLog release.

You must compare each field against an authorised source, correct errors and remove information you are not permitted to retain before saving or exporting. Never use AI output for patient care or as the sole basis for an official record, assessment or decision about a person.

15. API keys and third-party accounts

You must use only an API key and provider account you are authorised to use. Keep credentials confidential, apply provider spending and rate limits, rotate exposed credentials and review provider usage. RQAI is not responsible for provider charges, suspension, misuse of a key, changed models or account terms.

The current app encrypts the configured API key in the local vault and excludes it from OrthoLog backup and Google Drive vault payloads. A compromised unlocked device, malicious extension or altered build may still expose it.

16. Google Drive connection

Google Drive connection is optional and uses Google authentication plus the limited drive.file scope. The app stores a file it creates containing the encrypted vault, excluding the AI API key. Google still receives account, authorisation, network and file-operation metadata under its terms.

You are responsible for using an approved Google account, safeguarding that account, verifying synchronisation and resolving conflicts. Disconnecting Drive does not delete the file. Deleting a local vault does not delete a Drive copy, and deleting a Drive copy does not erase local or exported copies.

17. Encryption, passphrases and device security

The current vault format uses AES-256-GCM with a key derived by PBKDF2-SHA-256. Encryption protects stored content only to the extent that the device, browser, app build and passphrase remain secure. It does not protect information visible while the vault is unlocked, present in screenshots or exports, or sent to a third party.

Use a strong, unique passphrase; enable device encryption, screen lock and supported security updates; restrict browser extensions; and avoid shared or rooted/jailbroken devices. RQAI cannot recover a forgotten passphrase or decrypt the vault.

18. Backups, synchronisation and data loss

You are responsible for creating, securely storing and periodically testing an encrypted backup. Verify that a backup opens before relying on it. Synchronisation is not the same as backup: accidental deletion, corruption or an incorrect merge can propagate across devices.

Clearing browser data, uninstalling the app, changing origin, losing a device, forgetting a passphrase, storage eviction, software defects or third-party failure can cause permanent loss. Keep separate authoritative evidence where lawful.

19. Exports, clipboard and external destinations

Exports are generated for user review. You must check identifiers, dates, procedure mappings, headings, encoding and destination requirements before transfer. Generated local references may be rejected. External forms and import specifications may change without notice.

After download, copy, share or upload, the exported file or clipboard content is outside the encrypted vault. Protect it using organisation-approved storage and transfer methods, apply an appropriate retention period and delete unnecessary copies. OrthoLog does not confirm that an external submission succeeded.

20. Learning, reflections and professional records

Reflections, feedback and learning notes may contain confidential information even when identifiers are omitted. Write at the minimum level of detail needed for learning. You remain responsible for tone, accuracy, defamation, professional conduct, intellectual property and whether the material may be submitted to another system.

Descriptive statistics are summaries of what you entered. They do not prove competence, completion of curriculum requirements or quality of care.

21. Follow-up notes

Optional follow-up notes are for personal learning and are not intended to replace follow-up documentation in the official clinical record. Do not use OrthoLog to arrange, remind, monitor or manage patient care. Any clinically relevant information must be handled in the approved clinical system and workflow.

22. Prohibited use

You must not use OrthoLog to provide care, alter or substitute for a clinical record, contact or track a patient, monitor treatment, make a clinical or employment decision, assess another person without authority, evade audit, conceal a breach, re-identify de-identified data without authority, train or benchmark a model on confidential material, infringe intellectual-property or privacy rights, introduce malicious code, bypass access controls, probe another person’s credentials, or make unlawful, discriminatory, deceptive or harmful use of AI.

23. Intellectual property, user content and feedback

The software, name, design, documentation and original materials are protected by applicable intellectual-property law and any open-source licences shipped with the product. You retain the rights you lawfully hold in content you enter. You grant RQAI no general right to read vault content because the current architecture does not provide that access.

If you voluntarily send feedback, you permit RQAI to use the non-confidential ideas to improve the product without payment or attribution. Never include confidential or patient-related material in feedback.

24. Updates, availability, support and end of service

We may fix, change, add, limit, suspend or remove features, models, provider adapters, exports, installers or the hosted PWA. Security or legal reasons may require immediate changes. We may end the free service. Where reasonably practicable, material changes will be described on the website, but uninterrupted notice is not guaranteed.

Support is provided at discretion. We may decline material that appears to contain confidential information and may ask you to reproduce a problem with mock data.

25. Disclaimers

OrthoLog is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by law, no warranty is given that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure against every threat, compatible with every device or destination, or that extraction, imports, mappings, statistics and exports will be accurate or complete. No statement in the app is clinical, legal, regulatory, employment, training, cyber-security or information-governance advice.

Nothing in these terms affects a statutory guarantee or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded.

26. Liability

Nothing excludes or limits liability where doing so would be unlawful, including liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or death or personal injury caused by negligence. Subject to those mandatory rights, RQAI and individual contributors are not responsible for losses that were not reasonably foreseeable when these terms were accepted; business losses arising from personal use; rejected submissions; loss of professional evidence; third-party outages or charges; AI errors; disclosure caused by unauthorised use; or loss arising from failure to review, back up, minimise or follow applicable policy.

Because the service is free, and where a monetary cap is lawful and fair in the circumstances, total aggregate liability arising from the service is limited to £100. This cap does not apply to liability that cannot lawfully be limited. Different mandatory consumer or data-protection remedies may apply depending on the facts and jurisdiction.

27. Your responsibility for unlawful use

To the extent permitted by law, you are responsible for claims, loss and reasonable costs caused by your deliberate unlawful use, knowing breach of confidentiality, unauthorised disclosure, infringement of another person’s rights or breach of third-party provider terms. This does not transfer to you liability that the law places on RQAI and does not apply to the extent the loss was caused by RQAI.

28. Suspension and ending use

You may stop using OrthoLog at any time. Before uninstalling or clearing data, export and verify any lawful material you need. Ending use does not delete copies in Drive, Photos, Files, downloads, email, external systems or provider logs.

Access may be restricted where reasonably necessary to address security, legal requirements, abusive traffic, infringement or material misuse. Provisions concerning confidentiality, intellectual property, disclaimers, liability, disputes and existing copies survive where their nature requires.

29. General legal provisions

These terms, the Privacy Notice and AI Transparency Notice are the agreement for the current service, but do not replace mandatory law or professional duties. If a provision is unlawful or unenforceable, it is modified or removed only to the minimum extent necessary; the remainder continues. Delay in enforcing a right is not waiver. You may not assign your rights. RQAI may transfer operation of the service as part of a genuine transfer or restructuring, subject to applicable law and notice requirements. Unless mandatory law provides otherwise, no third party may enforce these terms.

30. Governing law, complaints and contact

Subject to mandatory rights in your country, these terms are governed by the law of England and Wales and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. Try to raise a service complaint first at hello@rqai.co.uk. Complaints about patient-data processing may need to go to the relevant employing or healthcare organisation, its data protection officer or Caldicott Guardian, and the appropriate supervisory authority.

These documents are detailed product documentation prepared without formal legal representation. They do not guarantee compliance for a particular deployment. Institutional or commercial deployment requires its own legal, information-governance, cyber-security, clinical-safety and procurement review.