Last update: 19 Oct. 26
Bookem and our affiliates ("Bookem," "us", "we", or "our") operates a website at bookem.com, bookem.health, bookem.xyz, bookem.app, bookem.ch, bookem.co.za, bookem.in, bookem.us, bookem.online or bookem.co (the "Site"). By our "Service" we mean all related websites and other services provided by us, or any digital media on which a link to this Privacy Policy is displayed, and all other communications with individuals though written or oral means (such as email or phone) directed at accessing or using any service we offer, together with the Site.
We are providing you this Privacy Policy so that you can be informed about our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data when you use our Service and the choices you have associated with that data.
We may use your data to provide and improve the Service or to provide technical support for customers using our Service. By using the Service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy, and our Terms of Service. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and subject to our Terms of Service. Unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy, terms used in this Privacy Policy have the same meanings as in our Terms of Service.
1.1 "Client" means a customer of Bookem.
1.2 "Client Data" means Personal Information a Client provides to use the Service.
1.3 “Consumer” means a patient or other natural person in respect of whom the Client is using the Service.
1.4 “Consumer Data” mean Personal Information provided by a Client to Bookem relating to a Consumer.
1.5 “Operator” means a person who Processes Personal Information for a Responsible Party without coming under the direct authority of that party.
1.6 "Personal Information" means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person or considered personally identifiable information by law and/or POPIA.
1.7 “POPIA” means the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013.
1.8 “Process” in relation to Personal Information means to collect, organise, store, modify, retrieve, refer to, distribute, or erase, or otherwise as defined in POPIA.
1.9 "Public Area" means those portions of the Service that can be accessed both by Users and Visitors, without needing to log in.
1.10 “Responsible Party” means a person who determines the purpose of and means for Processing Personal Information.
1.11 "Restricted Area" means those portions of the Service that can be accessed only by logging in.
1.12 “Sub-Processor” means a third party engaged by Bookem to process Personal Information on its behalf.
1.13 "User" means a person or entity that uses the Service.
1.14 "Visitor" means an individual other than a User, who uses the Public Area, but has no access to the Restricted Areas of the Site or Service.
2.1 We respect and recognise the importance of protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy statement sets out our information gathering and dissemination practices for the Site and the Services.
2.2 This Privacy Policy forms part of our Terms of Service. If you do not agree with this Policy, then you may not use this Website or Services and are required to cease doing so immediately.
2.3 In respect of Personal Information contained in Client Data, including patient and medical information, Bookem acts solely as an Operator as defined in POPIA. Bookem processes such Personal Information only on the instructions of the relevant Client and does not determine the purpose or means of processing such information.
3.1 Client and User Provided Information
3.1.1 We collect information to provide and improve our Service to you. We sometimes collect Personal Information including:
3.1.2 "Registration Information": When you register an account to use our Service, you will be asked to complete a registration form. This form requires providing information such as your name, address, phone number, email address and other Personal Information. This form also requires providing information about your business.
3.1.3 "Usage Data": We may also collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our Service. This may include information such as your computer's Internet Protocol address (i.e. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Site that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers, and the like. Usage Data may also include data about your purchasing patterns, your contact details, and your profile information.
3.1.4 "Payment Information": We may collect billing information, credit card numbers and expiration dates, or other payment information particularly if you establish a credit account with us or our providers or if you purchase a product or service from us, other Users of the Service, or other vendors available through the Site.
3.1.5 "Account Activities Information": We record and retain the records of your account activities when you use the Service. If you make sale and purchase transactions online through Bookem’s web-based transaction platform, we also collect information related to such transactions including the types and specifications of the goods, pricing and delivery information, any trade dispute records.
3.1.6 "Statistical Information": In addition, we gather statistical information about our Site and Users, such as IP addresses, browser software, operating system, software and hardware attributes, pages viewed, number of sessions, unique visitors and so forth.
3.1.7 "Marketing Information": From time to time, we gather information about our Users and prospective users during marketing events and other functions for follow up marketing purposes.
3.1.8 "Disclosed Personal Information": From time to time, our Users may disclose Personal Information deliberately or inadvertently including without limitation to personal identifiers such as name, email addresses, telephone number, facsimile number and IP address of individuals in the course of using the Site.
3.1.9 When you access the Service by or through a mobile device, this Usage Data may include information such as the type of mobile device you use, your mobile device unique ID, the IP address of your mobile device, your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser you use, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.
3.2 Information Collected by Clients
3.2.1 A User may store or upload data into the Service, including data relating to medical information or Consumers’ medical information (“Consumer Data”). Bookem has no direct relationship with the Consumers whose Personal Information it may host as part of Client Data.
3.2.2 Each Client is responsible for providing notice to Users who Consumers and third persons concerning the purpose for which the Client collects their Personal Information and how this Personal Information is processed in or through the Service as part of Client Data.
3.2.3 Clients are responsible for complying with their obligations as Responsible Parties under applicable privacy and health-data laws. Bookem processes Consumer Data strictly as an Operator and provides reasonable assistance to Clients to enable them to comply with such obligations.
3.2.4 Consumer Data may include health, medical, clinical, billing and related records, including information relating to children. Bookem processes such information only for purposes of providing the Services and strictly on Client instruction.
3.3 Information Collected by Cookies
3.3.1 We use "cookies" to store specific information about you and track your visits to our Site. It is common for websites to use cookies to enhance identification of their users. A "cookie" is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser and stored on your computer's hard drive. A cookie can be sent to your computer's hard drive only if you access our Site using the computer. If you do not de-activate or erase the cookie, each time you use the same computer to access our Site, our web servers will be notified of your visit to our Site and in turn we may have knowledge of your visit and the pattern of your usage. We use automatically collected information and other information collected on the Service through cookies and similar technologies to: (i) personalize our Service, such as remembering a User’s or Visitor’s information so that the User or Visitor will not have to re-enter it during a visit or on subsequent visits; (ii) provide customised advertisements, content, and information; (iii) monitor and analyse the effectiveness of Service and third-party marketing activities; (iv) monitor aggregate site usage metrics such as total number of visitors and pages viewed; and (v) track your entries, submissions, and status in any promotions or other activities on the Service. You can learn more about cookies by visiting http://www.allaboutcookies.org.
3.3.2 You can determine if and how a cookie will be accepted by configuring your browser, which is installed in the computer you are using to access the Site. If you desire, you can change those configurations in your browser to accept all cookies, to be notified when a cookie is sent, or to reject all cookies. If you reject all cookies you may be required to re-enter your information on our Site more often and certain features of our Site may be unavailable.
3.3.3 Examples of Cookies we may use:
Session Cookies. We may use Session Cookies to operate our Service.
Preference Cookies. We may use Preference Cookies to remember your preferences and various settings.
Security Cookies. We may use Security Cookies for security purposes.
3.4 Collected Information
By "Collected Information" we mean information collected by cookies, information collected by Clients that is provided to us or collected by us as Client Data, Consumer Data, Registration Information, Publishing Information, Usage Data, Payment Information, Account Activities Information, Statistical Information, Marketing Information, Disclosed Personal Information and any information we may collect from you, from our affiliates, or from other parties or through any other means.
We undertake that your information will be processed in accordance with applicable law and requirements directly applicable to the provision of our Services, and that we will only Process the information in a manner consistent with allowing use of our Site or Services and will process it to the minimum extent necessary. We may Process the Collected Information for various purposes:
4.1 General:
4.1.1 Bookem uses Collected Information relating to Clients and Users (excluding Consumer Data) to operate, maintain and improve the Service, provide technical support, and enforce agreements.
4.1.2 Operating the Service may require sharing Consumer Data (including patient and medical data and other special personal information) with other Clients and third party medical service providers as required in the provision of the Services and as instructed by Clients. For example a general practitioner may share patient medical information with a medical specialist when referring a patient to that specialist, or a doctor may share such information with a pharmacist in issuing a prescription, in both cases while using the Service.
4.1.3 We may also use Personal Information relating to the Client specifically to improve our marketing and promotional efforts (though we will never provide such data to any third party for marketing purposes).
4.1.4 We may use your Collected Information to provide technical support to Clients or other services to Clients, including but not limited to investigating problems, resolving disputes and enforcing agreements with us. We may use your Collected Information to facilitate proper operation of our Service and business activities of its Users including without limitation to facilitation of effective communication between buyers and suppliers and marketing activities of Users.
4.1.5 We do not otherwise sell, rent, trade or exchange any Personal Information of our Clients, Users or Visitors.
4.1.6 Your Collected Information may be transferred, stored, used and processed outside your home jurisdiction. In case of a merger with or transfer of business to another business entity, we will transfer your Collected Information to the entity which acquires the business (should such a combination occur, we will require that the new combined entity follow this Privacy Policy with respect to your Collected Information).
4.2 Registration Information: We may use your Registration Information to provide Services that you request or to contact you regarding additional services about which Bookem determines that you might be interested. Specifically, we may use your email address, mailing address, phone number or mobile number to contact you regarding notices, surveys, product alerts, new service or product offerings and communications relevant to your use of our Site. We may generate reports and analysis based on the Registration Information for internal analysis, monitoring and marketing decisions.
4.3 Usage Data: We use Usage Data to provide value-added services to our members including without limitation to providing buying pattern and buying behavioural data to our members to facilitate marketing initiatives and decision-making.
4.4 Payment Information: Bookem will share your Payment Information with banks or vendors relevant to the transaction in order to enable transactions to be completed. While Bookem has in place up-to-date technology and internal procedures to guard your Payment Information against intruders, there is no guarantee that such technology or procedure can eliminate all of the risks of theft, loss or misuse. Bookem will not be liable to you or any other person for any damages that might result from unauthorised use, publication, disclosure or any other misuse of Payment Information, including credit card information.
4.5 Account Activities Information: We use Account Activities Information to provide the Services that you request. We may also generate reports, statistics and analysis based on Account Activities Information to enhance and improve our Site and Services. We may also use Account Activities Information to determine your credit-worthiness.
4.6 Statistical Information: We use Statistical Information to help diagnose problems with and maintain our computer servers, to manage our Site, and to enhance our Site and Services based on the usage pattern data we receive. We may generate reports and analysis based on the Statistical Information for internal analysis, monitoring and marketing decisions. We may provide Statistical Information to third parties, but when we do so, we do not provide personally identifying information without your permission.
4.7 Disclosed Personal Information: We facilitate electronic commerce between businesses and our Services should not be used by individual consumers or for personal use.
4.8 Restriction on Use of Client Data: Notwithstanding any other provision of this Privacy Policy, Bookem does not use Consumer Data containing patient or medical information for marketing, profiling, analytics, product development, training AI (or allow providers to do so) or any other secondary purpose.
5.1 Unrestricted Information: Any information that you voluntarily choose to include in a Public Area of the Service, will be available to any Visitor or User who has access to that content.
5.2 Disclosure to Service Providers: We may provide your Collected Information to our affiliates and service providers under contract (such as customer care) to support the operation of the Site and Service. We work with third party service providers who provide website, application development, hosting, maintenance, artificial intelligence (AI) and other services for us. These third parties may have access to, or process Personal Information or Client Data as part of providing those services for us. We limit the information provided to these service providers to that which is reasonably necessary for them to perform their functions, and our contracts with them require them to maintain the confidentiality of such information. All service providers and Sub-Processors engaged by Bookem are contractually bound to confidentiality, security and data-protection obligations no less protective than those set out in this Privacy Policy, and Bookem remains responsible for their processing activities.
5.3 Business Transactions: If Bookem is involved in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, your Personal Information may be transferred because of that merger, acquisition, or asset sale. We will provide notice if your Personal Information becomes subject to a different Privacy Policy.
5.4 Disclosure for Law Enforcement: Under certain circumstances, Bookem may be required to disclose or make public Collected Information, including your Personal Information. For example, we may disclose Personal Information in the good faith belief that such action is necessary:
5.4.1 To comply with a legal obligation, for example in response to a subpoena or other judicial order or when we reasonably believe that such disclosure is required by law, regulation or administrative order of any court, governmental or regulatory authority.
5.4.2 To protect and defend the rights or property of Bookem, including to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be infringing or threatening to infringe, or who may otherwise be causing injury to or interference with, the title, rights, interests or property of Bookem, our Users, Clients, partners, affiliates, Visitors, or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities.
5.4.3 To prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service.
5.4.4 To protect the personal safety of users of the Service or the public.
5.4.5 To protect against legal liability.
5.4.6 To pursue a claim or prevent further injury to Bookem or others if we have reason to believe that a User is in breach of the Terms of Use or any other agreement with us.
5.5 AI and Automated Processing
5.5.1 Bookem uses third-party software and artificial-intelligence systems as Sub-Processors to perform limited automated functions, including transcription of voice recordings and generation of documents, solely to provide the Services.
5.5.2 These systems operate under Bookem’s control as an Operator and do not independently determine the purpose of processing.
6.1 Bookem will only retain your Personal Information for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy or as reasonably necessary to provide, promote and support the Service. We will retain and use your Personal Information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies.
6.2 Bookem will also retain Usage Data for internal analysis purposes. Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period, except when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of our Service, or we are legally obligated to retain this data for longer periods.
6.3 Bookem retains Client Data for as long as the Client holds an account and, after the account is closed, until the Client requests its deletion. This allows Clients to meet their record-keeping obligations, which for health practitioners can extend over many years. On a Client’s written request, Bookem will permanently delete the Client’s data.
6.4 Invoices, client profiles, documents and payments are not overwritten or deleted when they change. The earlier version is archived or a new version is created. This does not apply to business settings.
6.5 Bookem hosts its data in Frankfurt, in the European Union, and keeps full backups of its database there. Each backup is kept for 30 days. Backups are separate from the versioning described above.
7.1 Your information, including Personal Information, may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ than those from your jurisdiction.
7.2 If you are located outside the European Union and choose to provide information to us, please note that we transfer the data, including Personal Information, to the European Union and process it there.
7.3 Bookem will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and no transfer of your Personal Information will take place to an organisation or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of your Personal Information and other personal information. Bookem will ensure that recipients of such data is subject to laws or binding agreements providing a level of protection substantially similar to POPIA.
We have established relationships with other parties to offer you the benefit of other products and services that we ourselves do not offer. We offer you access to these other parties either through the use of hyperlinks to their sites from our Site, or through offering "co-branded" sites in which both ourselves and these other parties share the same uniform resource locator, domain name or pages within a domain name on the Internet. In some cases, you may be required to submit information for purposes of registering or applying for products or services provided by such third parties or co-branded partners. The privacy policy of such other parties may differ from ours, and we may not have any control over the information that you submit to such third parties or co-branded sites. We therefore encourage you to read that policy before responding to any offers, products or services provided by such other parties.
9.1 We will notify you without undue delay where we have reasonable grounds to believe that Personal Information has been accessed or acquired by any unauthorised person.
9.2 We will secure the integrity and confidentiality of Personal Information in our possession or under our control by taking appropriate, reasonable technical and organisational measures to prevent:
9.2.1 loss of, damage to or unauthorised destruction of Personal Information; and
9.2.2 unlawful access to or processing of Personal Information.
9.3 In order to give effect to the above duty, we will take reasonable measures to:
9.3.1 identify all reasonably foreseeable internal and external risks to Personal Information in our possession or under our control;
9.3.2 establish and maintain appropriate safeguards against the risks identified;
9.3.3 regularly verify that the safeguards are effectively implemented; and
9.3.4 ensure that the safeguards are continually updated in response to new risks or deficiencies in previously implemented safeguards
9.4 We will have due regard to generally accepted information security practices and procedures which may apply to us generally or be required in terms of specific industry or professional rules and regulations.
9.5 If you are a Client or User who has registered with the Service, your Registration Information, Publishing Information and Payment Information (if any) can be viewed and edited through your account, which is protected by a password. We recommend that you do not divulge your password to anyone. Our personnel will never ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or in an unsolicited e-mail. If you share a computer with others, you should not choose to save your login information (e.g., User ID and password) on the computer. Remember to sign out of your account and close your browser window when you have finished your session.
9.6 If you are a User or Visitor, please note that no method of transmission over the Internet, wireless transmission, or method of electronic storage is perfectly secure. The security of your data is important to us, and we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Information. However, we cannot guarantee its security.
The Services may process Personal Information relating to children where Clients provide healthcare or related services to minors. Bookem processes such information solely as an Operator and on the Client’s instruction. Clients are responsible for ensuring that all lawful consent and authorisation requirements are met.
Bookem aims to take reasonable steps to allow you to correct, amend, delete, or limit the use of your Personal Information.
11.1 Modifying Personal Information: Whenever made possible, if you have registered to use our Service, you can update your Personal Information directly within your account settings section. If you are unable to change your Personal Information, please contact us to make the required changes.
11.2 Removing Personal Information: If you wish to be informed what Personal Information we hold about you and if you want it to be removed from our systems, please contact us.
11.3 Data Portability: You have the right to data portability for the information you provide to Bookem. You can request to obtain a copy of your Personal Information in a commonly used electronic format so that you can manage and move it.
11.4 Other Data Subject Rights:
11.4.1 In certain circumstances, you have the right:
To access and receive a copy of the Personal Information we hold about you;
To rectify any Personal Information held about you that is inaccurate;
To request the deletion of Personal Information held about you.
11.4.2 Please note that our systems are set up so that the Client can respond to requests regarding these rights and you should contact any Client with whom you have shared Personal Information regarding this request. Please further note that you may be asked to verify your identity before receiving a response to such requests.
12.1 We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page.
12.2 We will let you know via email and/or a prominent notice on our Service, prior to the change becoming effective and update the "effective date" at the top of this Privacy Policy.
12.3 We recommend that you review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when posted on this page.
12.4 Continued use of the Website or Services subsequent to any amendments having been made constitutes your acceptance of the Privacy Policy as amended.
13.1 If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us by email at [email protected].
13.2 Bookem welcomes your continuous input regarding our Privacy Policy or our services provided to you. You may send us your comments and responses to Bookem at [email protected].