eMed Privacy Policy

Applicable only if you accessed services directly provided by eMed on or before 17th March 2025. As of today, eMed does not offer private medical services directly.

Welcome to the eMed privacy policy.We take your privacy seriously. We want you to know why we need certain information from you, what we're doing with it, and how we keep it secure.

Table of contents

1. What this policy covers

This policy explains how we use your data to deliver our healthcare app, websites and services. This includes:

  • Our private service, including the enrollment and use of one of our programmes;
  • Our NHS service, GP at Hand;
  • Our app, including any beta versions;
  • Our websites (www.babylonhealth.com and www.gpathand.nhs.uk);
  • Some of our services we offer with our partners, or on behalf of them, and
  • The technology we use to support our partners' services

We provide these services through 2 companies in our group:

  1. Babylon Healthcare Services Limited (BHSL): the company that provides our medical services
  2. eMed Healthcare UK Limited (eMed UK): the company that supplies the technology and software for these services

When we talk about eMed, us or we in this policy, we mean these 2 companies.

BHSL is the controller of any health and medical data we may collect from you when you use our services, and may share this data with eMed UK as a processor on behalf of BHSL (for more information on this, see how and why we share your data below).

This means that we're responsible for how your personal data is handled and what it's used for through these 2 companies. If you wish to exercise any of your rights, both companies act as one.

Our NHS service is called GP at Hand. GP at Hand offers a digital-first primary care service to its registered patients.

These services are provided by BHSL under a subcontract arrangement with the NHS.

Read more about GP at Hand.

See more about our registered companies.

2. What data we hold and how we get it

Personal data is any information we have that can identify you, such as your name, medical history or credit card details.

Personal Details

When you register with us, we'll ask you for your:

  • Name
  • Date of birth
  • Address
  • Contact details
  • Any information needed in order to enrol and determine your eligibility on one of our programmes
  • A copy of your ID (identity documentation), such as a driving licence

The information you give us must be accurate. If you give us information about yourself or another person, you're confirming that you're authorised to do so.

Health and medical data

When you use our services, we collect information about your health, including:

  • General health (including information necessary to determine eligibility on one our programmes)
  • Symptoms, treatments, participation in our programmes and medications
  • Consultations, such as notes and recordings
  • Procedures, such as surgery, scans or X-rays
  • Interactions with our services, like using our Symptom Checker or other digital services. These interactions may be shared with our clinical staff so that we can provide you with healthcare, and so that we can provide a better experience

Some of this information comes directly from you, but it can also come from third parties, such as your GP.

If you use GP at Hand, we'll get your medical history from your previous GP.

If you use our private service, we'll send your appointment notes to your NHS GP, if you give us your consent.

We share children's appointment notes with their NHS GP, in line with current medical guidelines.

Details of your conversations with us

We also keep a record of your consultations and your conversations with us. This is so we have an easy way to access your consultations to monitor the quality of our service and healthcare.

And, if you have consented, so that we can use them to improve our services. This includes:

  • Your conversations with our Symptom Checker
  • Your emails, calls or live chat conversations with our support team
  • video and/or audio recordings from consultations, including your participation on our programmes

We keep your health and medical data secure by applying technical and organisational measures to protect it.

Find out how long we keep your data.

Data from other sources

We might also receive some data about you and your health from other apps, devices and services.

This will only happen if you've agreed to sharing that data with us. For example, if you decided to share information collected from a smartwatch with our app.

Credit and debit card information

If you make a payment on the app, your credit and debit card details are processed by a third-party payment provider.

We don't store any of your credit or debit card information and we only keep details of the transactions on our secure servers.

Technical information and analytics

When you use our app, or visit our website, we may collect the following data, where this is allowed by your device or browser settings:

  • The IP address used to connect your mobile phone or other device to the internet
  • Your browser information, such as Google Chrome or Apple Safari
  • Login and operating system
  • The make and model of your device
  • Resettable device identifiers
  • Time zone, language and location settings
  • Your mobile network provider and your location (based on your IP address)
  • Information about your visit to our website or use of our app, for example when you first visited the site or how many times you've visited
  • Information about the products or services you viewed or used
  • App response times and updates
  • Information about your interactions, like what notifications you opened
  • Any phone number used to call our customer service number

We work with other companies that provide us with analytics and advertising services. This is to:

  • Help us understand how people interact with our services
  • Provide the adverts for our services on the internet
  • Measure the performance of our services and our adverts

Cookies

We also use 'cookies'. Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website. They collect information about how you use the website and the pages you visit.

You can find out more about how we use cookies in our cookie policy.

Information from third-party services

It's possible to connect your social media accounts, or your wearable device (like a smartwatch) with our services. For example, you can sign up for eMed using your Facebook login details. If you choose to do this, we'll receive the following information about you from the third party:

  • Name
  • Email address
  • Username or ID
  • Health and lifestyle habits and information

If you use login details from third parties, they will also process your login data, and they are solely responsible for handling this.

We may also get information from other sources, such as companies who offer information on consumer trends.

We use this information to help us make our services better. We comply with data protection laws when we do this. If this information is used alongside your personal data, we will make sure that our interests never come before your rights.

3. What we use your data for

Providing you with a service

  • Providing you with a health advice
  • Diagnosis and treatments if you use our clinical services (our video and audio consultations, where you can talk with one of our medical professionals)
  • Providing you with a service as part of one of our programmes
  • Providing you or planning for healthcare services in our 'legitimate interest'
  • Performing tasks in the public's interest (for example, our NHS services)
  • When it is in your vital interests
  • Your consent (for example, when you use our private service and agree to sharing information with your NHS GP)
  • To fulfil a contract with us (as a healthcare professional) as part of one of our programmes
  • Consultations, like notes, recordings, and transcripts
  • Use of products like Symptom Checker and Healthcheck
  • Your previous NHS GP, if you use Babylon GP at Hand
  • Your GP, if you use our private service
  • Our NHS or clinical service partners
  • Referral services like therapists, pharmacists and hospitals

Improving eMed's Services

  • Medical records
  • Consultations, like notes, recordings and transcripts
  • Use of products like Symptom Checker and Healthcheck

Helping Health Research

Using your data when it's in our 'legitimate interest'

Keeping you up to date

Regulating the quality and safety of our service

  • If we're legally required to, or asked by a regulator, we may need to share your information with regulatory bodies like the General Medical Council, Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency or Care Quality Commission
  • We may audit how you use our services, for example to review the quality of results provided by our products

4. How we store and move your data

Personal Health and Medical Information

  • Your primary care information
  • Information about your medications
  • Any information about a diagnosis of illness or other problems

Credit and debit card information

Where we store and process your health data

5. How and why we share your data

Service providers

Partners

  • Name
  • Date of birth
  • Email address
  • Policy number
  • Location

Other healthcare providers

  • Our clinical partners (including our NHS partners) who we work jointly or in connection with to provide you a service
  • Your NHS GP
  • Specialist referral services
  • Therapists
  • Pharmacists
  • Hospitals
  • Accident and emergency services
  • Testing service providers
  • Diagnosis centres chosen by you for things like X-rays and other imaging
  • Other health and care bodies and providers

Protecting public health

  • NHS Digital
  • NHS England and Improvement
  • Public Health England
  • Local authorities
  • Health organisations
  • GPs

Aggregated or anonymous data

Statistical data in the public's interest

If you use our GP at hand service

Integrated care

Your summary care records

  • Comply with a law, regulation, legal process, or government request
  • State our legal rights or defend against legal claims
  • Stop, find, or look into illegal activity, fraud, abuse, breaking our terms, or threats to the security of our services or the physical safety of anyone

6. How long we keep your data

7. Your rights

  • Remove or change your consent at any time, if we are using your data in a certain way based on it. You can do this by:
    - Going to the app, selecting 'Me' and then 'Privacy preferences'; or
    - Going to the Babylon Health website, selecting 'Account' and then 'Privacy'
  • Ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you. Your data is stored in line with our legal and medical obligations. See: how long we keep your data)
  • Ask us to correct information that's wrong, delete it, or ask that we only use it for certain purposes. There might be times when we're not able to help, like if the law or our medical obligations say we can't.
  • Ask us to restrict any automated (computer-made) decisions made with your data
  • Ask for your data to be provided in a portable format that allows you to move, copy or transfer it. Or ask us to send it in this format to someone else.

8. Changes to this policy