A plain-language note for patients opening a Care Tales module about what is recorded, who reads chat and why this is education rather than medical advice.
Effective date: September 22, 2026
You are reading this because a clinic, hospital or medical practice gave you a Care Tales module, usually as a QR code or a link. You do not need an account. Here is what happens with your information, in plain words.
Care Tales modules explain conditions, treatments and instructions. They are not medical advice, a diagnosis or a treatment plan. Nothing here replaces your own clinician.
If you think you are having an emergency, call 911 or your local emergency number now. Do not wait on anything you read here.
Even without an account, we record how the module was used:
If you answer a survey before or after the module, or leave a star rating or a comment, we keep exactly what you wrote.
If you asked for the link by text message, we keep your phone number and a record that you agreed to the text.
Chat that belongs to your clinic is recorded. Your messages and the answers are stored word for word and are kept until your clinic's account is deleted.
Two groups can read them:
Please do not type anything you would not want your clinic to see. Nobody is watching the chat as it happens, so it is not a way to reach your care team.
Your message is sent to Google to generate the answer, using Google's Gemini models. A shortened version of your internet address is sent to a company called ip-api.com to work out the nearby city, so the answer can mention local services. Your message text is not sent there.
If the chat sits on your clinic's own website rather than ours, it also records your full internet address, your approximate location, your device and browser, your language, your time zone and the page you came from.
The small chat inside a module is different. Those messages are not saved. We count only how often it is opened.
The answers come from a computer program. It can be wrong. Check anything important with your care team.
We do not sell your information. We do not use it for advertising. We do not use what you write to train AI models. We do not send anything to your insurer.
We want to be honest about this. There is no automatic deletion schedule today. What is recorded stays until the clinic's account is deleted, which removes its visits, module sessions and chat transcripts. We are building a retention schedule.
Write to support@caretales.com. Because you have no account, nothing in these records carries your name, and you are never shown an id for them. Tell us the clinic, the module and roughly when you used it, and we will find and delete what we can.
You can also ask your clinic. It holds its own copy of the chat transcripts and session data and can delete them.
We will post a new version here with a new effective date whenever this changes.