Privacy Policy
Encounter is a clinical documentation tool for licensed physicians. It captures patient demographic and encounter information so a physician can document hospital rounds. Because the app handles patient information, this policy is deliberately specific about what is collected, why, where it goes, and how long it is kept.
1. Information we collect
Account information. Your name, email address, and (if provided by your administrator) your NPI number. Accounts are created by your practice or group administrator, not by self-service sign-up.
Patient health information you capture. The app exists so physicians can document encounters. On the physician's instruction it captures and stores patient names, dates of birth, medical record numbers, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, insurance details, diagnoses, procedures, fees, and free-text clinical notes.
Face sheet images. Photographs of patient face sheets taken with the in-app camera or selected from the photo picker.
Voice dictation audio. When you use voice dictation, audio is processed in memory and transcribed by speech recognition running on your device. The audio is never stored and never leaves your phone; only the resulting text is kept, as part of your encounter note.
On your device. The app keeps a sign-in token in the iOS Keychain and a local, encrypted cache of recent patients and encounters so the app works smoothly at the bedside.
2. Information we do not collect
- No advertising or marketing identifiers (no IDFA).
- No location data.
- No analytics or crash-reporting SDKs (no Firebase, Mixpanel, Sentry, or similar).
- No access to your contacts, calendar, or photo library beyond the single image you explicitly select.
3. Why we collect it
For exactly one purpose: to let physicians document patient encounters and the associated billing codes. We do not use the data for any secondary purpose. We do not sell it, share it for marketing, profile it, or use it to train AI models.
4. Third parties
One third party processes data on our behalf: xAI. When you capture a face sheet, our backend sends the image to xAI's chat-completions API (api.x.ai) to extract the printed demographic and admission fields. The image is the only data sent in the request — patient identity is reconciled on our own servers. xAI's privacy policy is available at x.ai/legal/privacy-policy.
No other third party receives any data. No Apple cloud service (iCloud, CloudKit, push notifications) carries patient information.
5. Retention
- Patient records and encounters are retained until deleted by the physician or the account is deleted.
- Face sheet images are retained for the same lifetime as the encounter they belong to.
- Dictation audio is not retained at all.
- Server backups are kept for 30 days, then destroyed.
6. Security
Sign-in tokens are stored in the iOS Keychain. Face sheet images on the device are protected with iOS complete file protection (encrypted whenever the device is locked). All traffic between the app and our servers uses TLS. Server access is restricted to authorized Medasis personnel.
7. Your rights and account deletion
You can sign out at any time, which revokes the device's access token. You can delete your account and its associated data from the app's Settings screen, or by emailing the support address below — deletion requests are honored within 30 days. Patients who believe their information is held in Encounter should direct requests to their treating physician or facility, which is the medical-record custodian.
8. HIPAA
We treat all patient information handled by Encounter as protected health information under HIPAA, and we limit its collection, use, and disclosure to the documentation purpose described above.
9. Children
Encounter is built for licensed physicians and is not intended for use by anyone under 18.
10. Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted at this address with an updated effective date. Material changes will be noted in the app's release notes.
Contact
Privacy questions and deletion requests: use the support page — messages go directly to our support team, who handle privacy inquiries.