Privacy policy

Patientier helps people find, save and follow clinical trials. This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with and the choices you have. It covers patientier.com and every site Patientier runs for an organization, such as a patient group or a hospital. On those sites, Patientier collects and handles your information as described here.

The short version

• We collect what we need to run your account and nothing more.
• We never sell your information, show you ads, or send what you follow to advertisers or analytics companies.
• The organization whose site you use doesn't see your account, your saved searches or your saved trials.
• You can delete your account at any time in Settings. Everything in it is deleted straight away.

What we collect

Your account. Your email address and your password. We store the password only in a scrambled form (a hash) that can't be turned back into the password.

What you follow. When you save a search, we keep what you enter: the disease, the patient's birth date and sex at birth, a city and its location on the map, how far they can travel, and whether you want the weekly email. We also keep the trials you save, when you saved each one, and whether you want an email when one changes. A saved search can be about you or someone you care for.

Sign-in and security. The codes we email you, the browsers you've signed in on, including their IP address and browser type, and the browsers you've chosen to trust. We use these to keep your account safe and to stop abuse.

Payments. If you pay for a plan, Stripe handles your card, and gets your email and the billing address it needs to work out sales tax. We never see or store your card number; we keep your plan, whether it's paid, when it renews, and the IDs Stripe gives your customer record and subscription.

Cookies. We use cookies only to keep you signed in, to remember a browser you've trusted, and to remember whether the menu is open. We don't use advertising or tracking cookies.

Why this information is sensitive

Patientier isn't a healthcare provider and doesn't collect medical records. But an account that links an email address to a disease, a birth date and a gender is health information, and on a site run for a group about one disease, even having an account says something about you. We treat all of it as sensitive. That's why we never record your saved searches or what you search for in our logs.

How we use it

• To run your account: sign-up, sign-in codes and password resets.
• To search for trials that match your saved searches, and to send the weekly email if you turn it on.
• To check your saved trials on ClinicalTrials.gov every day, show you what changed since you saved them, and, on plans that include it, email you when one changes.
• To keep accounts and the service secure.
• To bill for paid plans.

Who we share it with

We share information only with the services that run Patientier, and only what each one needs:

• Hosting and backups (DigitalOcean and Cloudflare) store our databases and their backups.
• Email (Postmark) delivers our emails to your address, including the weekly email's list of new trials and the names of saved trials that changed. We turn off Postmark's open and click tracking.
• Payments (Stripe) handles subscriptions and cards.
• ClinicalTrials.gov, run by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, receives the search: the disease, location and filters. To check saved trials, it receives their trial IDs, many at once. It never receives your email or account.
• Google Maps receives what you type in the city field, to suggest cities, and the city you pick, to find where it is. It never receives your account or the rest of your saved search. The Google Privacy Policy covers what Google does with it.
• Plain-language summaries are written by an AI service from the trial's public description only. It never receives anything about you.

We may also share information when the law requires it, or to protect people from harm. If Patientier is ever sold or merged, this policy continues to apply to your information.

Organizations' sites

An account on one site is separate from an account on any other, even with the same email address. The organization that runs a site chooses its logo and the diseases its site covers, but it can't see who has an account, what anyone follows or what they save.

How long we keep it

We keep your information while you have an account. When you delete your account, we delete it and everything in it at once. Copies in our backups are deleted as those backups expire, within 30 days. If an organization's site closes, 90 days after its subscription ended, every account on it is deleted the same way. We email you when the site is paused, and again 30 days before it closes. Codes expire after 10 minutes, and signing in lasts 7 days on a browser unless you sign out.

Your choices

• Change your password or delete your account in Settings.
• Turn the weekly email off at any time, from any weekly email.
• Turn off emails about changes to your saved trials in Settings, or from any of those emails.
• Ask us what we hold about you, or to correct it, by writing to contact@patientier.com.

Security

Connections to our sites are encrypted. Passwords are stored as hashes, every new browser needs a code we email you, and access to our servers is limited. If a breach ever affects your information, we will tell you as the law requires.

Children

You must be 18 or older to create an account. Parents and caregivers can follow trials for a child.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the date above. If a change affects how we use your information, we'll email you before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions about privacy: contact@patientier.com.