Terms of Service

1. About these Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and [Company Name] ("we", "us"), the operator of GP Emergency Referral (the "Platform"), a Rotary Bangalore South Parade × NMO initiative. They apply to the website, the installable web app and the mobile apps.

Operator

[Company Name]

Registered address

[Registered Address]

CIN

[CIN]

Contact

[Contact Email]

By creating an account, registering a hospital, accepting an invitation or otherwise using the Platform you confirm that you have read and agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Platform. These Terms are an electronic record under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and do not require a physical or digital signature.

2. What the Platform does

The Platform is a professional communication tool for registered medical practitioners and hospitals. It lets a referring doctor:

• see which nearby hospitals report an emergency speciality as available now, ranked by clinical suitability and then travel time or distance;
• share a short, structured clinical summary with the receiving doctor;
• call the on-duty doctor or the hospital's referral desk through an in-app voice call, without either side seeing the other's personal phone number; and
• track the outcome of the referral (accepted, alternative suggested, patient arrival) and the digital referral note.

Hospitals use the Platform to publish their emergency capabilities, manage duty rosters and staff, answer referral calls and manage their subscription and referral credits.

3. Medical disclaimer

• The Platform facilitates doctor-to-doctor communication only. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, and it does not create a doctor–patient relationship between us and any patient.
• The referring doctor and the receiving doctor remain solely responsible for their clinical decisions, including whether, when and where to refer or transfer a patient, and for meeting their professional, ethical and legal obligations (including the National Medical Commission regulations and any applicable state council rules).
• Availability statuses, rosters, capabilities and facilities are entered by hospitals and doctors. They may be out of date or wrong. A hospital or doctor shown as available is not obliged to accept a referral. Always confirm directly before sending a patient.
• Distances and travel times are estimates from a mapping service or a straight-line calculation and do not account for live traffic or road closures.
• The condition-to-speciality search is a static keyword map to help you find a speciality. It is not clinical decision support.

Where a consultation over the Platform amounts to teleconsultation between registered medical practitioners, the participating practitioners are responsible for following the Telemedicine Practice Guidelines, 2020 (Board of Governors in supersession of the Medical Council of India), including on patient consent, identification and record keeping.

4. Accounts and eligibility

Each account has exactly one type:

• Referring doctor — a medical practitioner (allopathic, AYUSH or other recognised system) registered with a statutory medical council. Referring doctors self-register and can refer only after we verify their registration details.
• Hospital staff — people who work for a registered hospital, with one of these roles: hospital admin (registers and manages the hospital, staff and billing), manager, on-duty doctor (joins by email invitation), referral desk and ambulance driver. Staff without email are issued an 8-digit user ID and a temporary password by their hospital admin or manager, which must be changed at first sign-in.
• Platform admin — our personnel who verify doctors and hospitals, review complaints and appeals, manage payments and review audit logs.

You agree that:

• you are at least 18 years old and the information you give (including your medical registration number, council, qualification and mobile number) is true, current and your own;
• you will keep your password and devices secure, will not share your account, and will tell us promptly at [Contact Email] if you suspect unauthorised use;
• a hospital admin who registers a hospital has authority to bind that hospital to these Terms and is responsible for the staff accounts they create, invite or disable; and
• we may refuse, delay or revoke verification of a doctor or hospital where the details cannot be confirmed.

5. Patient information you share

Referral summaries and referral notes contain health information about a patient. You must share only what is necessary for the referral:

• Keep summaries minimal: age, sex, presenting complaint, working diagnosis, vitals, investigations, treatment given and reason for referral are enough. Do not enter the patient's name, phone number, address, ID numbers or other direct identifiers in the pre-call summary.
• The referral note has optional patient name and identifier fields for the receiving hospital. Fill them only where needed for continuity of care.
• You are responsible for having a lawful basis to share the patient's information with the receiving doctor (for example the patient's or their representative's consent, or medical emergency), and for informing the patient as your professional obligations require.

Our handling of this information is described in the Privacy Policy.

6. In-app calls and call recording

Calls are made over the internet (WebRTC) inside the Platform; your personal phone number is not shown to the other party. Call quality depends on your network, device and browser, and calls can fail. If a call does not connect, the Platform may offer the next doctor in the hospital's contact order. If no device answers quickly, the receiving doctor may receive an SMS alert instead.

Where recording is enabled, referral calls are recorded for clinical governance, quality, dispute resolution and misuse investigation. A recording notice is shown next to the Call button and on the answer screen; pressing Call, or answering after the notice is shown, signifies your consent. Doctors who answer from the phone's lock screen give a standing consent once in the app. If a callee has not consented, only the caller's side is recorded. Recordings are kept for 1,095 days by default, are accessible only to the call's participants, an admin of the referral's hospital and platform admins, and every access is logged.

7. Acceptable use and misuse policy

The Platform is for genuine emergency and urgent clinical referrals only. You must not:

• make marketing, sales, personal or other non-medical calls;
• make repeated unnecessary calls, or abuse, harass or threaten any user;
• impersonate another person, use another doctor's registration, or misstate your qualifications or a hospital's capabilities or availability;
• scrape, copy or export doctor or hospital data, or try to discover users' personal phone numbers;
• probe, overload or bypass the Platform's security, rate limits or access controls, or upload malicious code; or
• use the Platform in breach of any law or professional code.

Complaints and the three-strike rule

A doctor who received a call can report it as misuse, giving a reason. A platform admin reviews the call record and summary and validates or dismisses the complaint. Validated complaints count as strikes:

• 1st strike — warning;
• 2nd strike — formal warning and monitoring of your calls;
• 3rd strike — suspension of calling privileges for 30 days and admin review.

You can appeal a validated complaint within 14 days from your account. If an appeal is upheld the strike is removed. In serious cases a platform admin may blacklist a doctor (permanently withdraw calling privileges), with a recorded reason; a platform admin can also reinstate.

8. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or disable an account, withdraw verification, delist a hospital or restrict features, with or without notice, if we reasonably believe that you have breached these Terms, your registration is no longer valid, there is a security risk, or we are required to by law or a competent authority. Where practical we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond.

You can stop using the Platform at any time and ask us to close your account (see Data Protection). Referral, call, payment and audit records may be retained after closure as described in the Privacy Policy. Sections that by their nature should survive (disclaimers, liability, indemnity, governing law) survive termination.

9. Hospital subscription and referral credits

• Hospitals pay in blocks of ₹2,000. The first payment activates a 12-month subscription and adds the amount to the hospital's referral credit balance; later payments add credit (and re-activate an expired subscription for 12 months).
• ₹200 is deducted from the credit balance when the hospital confirms a referred patient's arrival, at most once per referral. A referral is never blocked clinically for lack of credit; the balance may go negative.
• A hospital is listed in referring doctors' search only while it is verified, its subscription is active and it has enough credit for one referral.
• Online payments are processed by our payment gateway (Razorpay or Cashfree); platform admins may also record payments made offline. Prices are in Indian Rupees and include or exclude taxes as shown at checkout.
• All payments are final and non-refundable except as set out in our Refund & Cancellation Policy.

10. Intellectual property

The Platform, its software, design and content (excluding content you submit) belong to us or our licensors. We give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use it for its intended purpose. You keep ownership of the content you submit and give us a licence to host, process and display it as needed to run the Platform.

11. Third-party services

The Platform relies on third-party services such as payment gateways, email and SMS delivery, push notification services (Expo, Apple, Google), mapping and cloud storage and hosting. Their availability is outside our control and their own terms may apply to you. The current list is in the Privacy Policy.

12. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The Platform is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law we do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure, that calls, notifications or SMS will be delivered, or that information shown by hospitals or doctors is accurate or complete.

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• we are not liable for any clinical decision, outcome, injury or death arising from a referral, consultation, transfer or the care given by any doctor or hospital;
• we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or loss of profits, revenue, data or goodwill; and
• our total liability for all claims relating to the Platform is limited to the amount you (or your hospital) paid us for the Platform in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud or for wilful misconduct.

13. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against claims, losses and costs (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your breach of these Terms or of law, your clinical acts or omissions, or patient information you shared without a lawful basis.

14. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. The "Last updated" date and version at the top of this page will change, and for material changes we will notify you in the app or by email. We record the version you accepted. Continuing to use the Platform after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.

15. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of India. Subject to the grievance process below, the courts at Bengaluru, Karnataka have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from these Terms or the Platform. This does not take away any mandatory right you have to approach the Data Protection Board of India or another statutory authority.

16. Grievances and contact

In accordance with the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the rules under it, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, you can contact our Grievance Officer about these Terms, content on the Platform or your personal data:

Grievance Officer

[Grievance Officer Name]

Email

[Grievance Officer Email]

Phone

[Grievance Officer Phone]

Data protection contact

[DPO/Data Protection contact]

Postal address

[Company Name], [Registered Address]

Timelines are described in Data Protection.