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Ask Fellow Optoms

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 5 October 2026

Introduction

We respect the privacy of our users. This Privacy Policy explains how Ask Fellow Optoms, "we", "us", or "our" collects, uses, discloses, and safeguards your information when you use our website, applications, and services.

By using the Platform, you acknowledge that your personal data will be handled in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services or legal requirements. Where appropriate, we will notify you of material changes by updating this policy.

Collection of Your Information

We may collect information about you in a variety of ways through your use of the Platform.

Ask Fellow Optoms does not intentionally collect identifiable patient health information. The Platform is designed to support anonymised professional discussion.

However, users may upload content relating to clinical scenarios. Such content may include health-related information, and users are solely responsible for ensuring that any data shared is fully anonymised and complies with applicable data protection laws.

Ask Fellow Optoms implements reasonable safeguards to reduce the risk of identifiable data being shared but cannot guarantee that all user-submitted content is free from identifiable information.

Categories of Personal Data We Collect

Account Information

We may collect account and profile information such as your name, email address, telephone number, profile image, professional details, registration number, and any other information you choose to provide when creating or managing your account.

Professional Verification Data

We may collect information used to verify your professional status, identity, or eligibility to use the Platform, including registration numbers, credentials, or supporting documents where required.

Content and Communications

We may collect messages, posts, uploaded content, comments, saved items, reactions (such as likes, agreements with replies, and poll votes), case-related discussions, CPD activity and reflections, and other information you generate through the Platform.

We may also communicate with you using channels such as email, push notification, or other service-related messaging in relation to your account, support, updates, or where permitted, marketing communications.

Usage Data

We may collect information about how you interact with the Platform, including app launches, taps, clicks, views, time spent on cases, searches you make, scrolling activity, feature usage, engagement, and advertisement interactions.

Device and Technical Data

We may automatically collect technical data such as your IP address, browser type, device type, operating system, access times, and diagnostic or log information generated through your use of the Platform.

Data from Social Networks

If you connect your account through a social network, we may receive certain information from that provider, such as your name, username, email address, and profile picture, depending on the permissions you grant.

Third-Party Data

We may receive information about you from third parties, such as service providers, analytics partners, verification providers, or other users, where permitted by law.

Use of Your Information

Lawful Bases for Processing

We rely on the following lawful bases under applicable data protection law:

  • Contractual necessity to provide the Platform and its core functionality
  • Legitimate interests to operate, secure, maintain, and improve the Platform, support professional community features, personalise content through profiling, and match sponsored content to your interests. We keep a record of the assessment balancing these interests against your rights
  • Legal obligations where processing is required to comply with applicable laws, regulations, legal requests, or regulatory requirements
  • Consent where required, including for certain optional marketing or tracking activities. Marketing sent by email is sent only where you have agreed or the law otherwise permits, and every such message lets you opt out

How We Use Personal Data

  • Create, manage, and administer your account
  • Provide, maintain, and improve the Platform
  • Enable user-to-user communications and content sharing
  • Verify professional status or eligibility to use the Platform
  • Assess, investigate, and moderate content where necessary to enforce our terms, protect users, or comply with legal or regulatory obligations
  • Monitor and analyse usage and trends to improve the Platform and user experience
  • Personalise the Platform, including recommending cases and content, using a profile of your professional interests (see "Personalisation and Profiling" below)
  • Send service-related communications, account notifications, updates, and support messages
  • Conduct surveys, research, testing, and product development
  • Resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, and respond to support requests
  • Maintain security, prevent misuse, and detect fraud or unlawful activity
  • Compile anonymised or aggregated statistics for internal use or sharing with third parties
  • Perform Smart Targeting to match relevant advertising and sponsored content to your interests based on your discussion topics and engagement patterns
  • Track individual engagement with sponsored content and advertisements to measure effectiveness
  • Comply with legal, regulatory, or contractual obligations

Personalisation and Profiling

We build a profile of your professional interests from how you use the Platform. We use it to show you more relevant cases, content, and sponsored content.

Your profile is based on the cases you view, save, like, and post, the replies you write and agree with, your searches, your CPD activity and reflections, your webinar registrations, and when you use the app.

From this we infer the clinical topics that interest you, topics where you are building experience, topics where you share expertise, your likely career stage, and how you prefer to use the app. We may use automated tools, including AI service providers, to produce this analysis.

We use your profile to personalise content and to match sponsored content to your interests. We never use topics where you are seeking help to target advertising. Advertisers choose an audience by topic and receive only aggregated results. They never receive your profile or learn that you were in an audience.

Your profile is not used to make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you, and it is not used to make clinical decisions or recommendations.

You can ask for a copy of your profile, ask us to correct it, or object to profiling at any time by contacting info@askfellowclinicians.com. If you object to profiling for advertising, we will stop.

Use of User-Generated Content for Promotion

We may use content shared on the Platform for promotional, advertising, educational, or community engagement purposes, including on social media platforms, in email communications, and across other marketing channels, only where that content has been anonymised so that no individual can reasonably be identified. This mirrors the license described in our Terms and Conditions (Section 7, Intellectual Property Rights).

When using user-generated content externally, we will not intentionally include usernames, profile images, profile details, identifiable patient information, or other details that could reasonably identify a user or another individual. We may edit, crop, adapt, or reformat anonymised content as reasonably necessary for the relevant promotional or marketing format.

We aim to apply data minimisation principles and only use the minimum information necessary for the relevant promotional or community purpose.

Disclosure of Your Information

By Law or to Protect Rights

We may disclose your information where required to comply with legal obligations, legal process, regulatory requests, law enforcement requirements, or to protect the rights, property, safety, and integrity of the Platform, our users, or others.

Service Providers

We may share your information with third parties that perform services for us or on our behalf, including hosting, analytics, email delivery, infrastructure services, security services, and customer support. These service providers are subject to contractual obligations to maintain confidentiality and process data only for specified purposes.

Note: Third-party advertising and marketing partners are handled separately under the "Advertising, Analytics, and Marketing Providers" section below.

Interaction with Other Users

Other users may see information you choose to share on the Platform, such as your name, profile image, profile details, and content, depending on your account settings and how you use the Platform.

Online Postings

When you post comments, contributions, or other content to the Platform, that content may be visible to other users and may be shared or redistributed by them outside the Platform. You should exercise care when choosing what information to post.

We are not responsible for how other users use, share, or redistribute content once it is visible to them.

Advertising, Analytics, and Marketing Providers

We may work with third-party advertising, analytics, and communications partners who assist with advertising delivery, performance measurement, campaign support, and data analysis, subject to applicable law and consent requirements where relevant.

Smart Targeting and Contextual Advertising

Ask Fellow Optoms uses Smart Targeting technology to match relevant advertising and sponsored professional content to your interests. This involves analyzing discussion topics, professional context, and engagement patterns on the Platform to determine which ads and sponsored content may be most relevant to you.

How Your Data Is Used for Smart Targeting:

  • We analyse the clinical topics, professional scenarios, and discussion areas you engage with on the Platform
  • We track your engagement with various features, discussions, and content to understand your professional interests
  • We use this information to match you with relevant advertising from approved commercial partners in your field
  • We use only your topics of interest for advertising, never topics where you are seeking help
  • Advertisers select an audience by professional topic. Audiences must contain at least 50 users, and advertisers never receive audience lists or learn which users were in an audience
  • We do not use Smart Targeting analysis to make automated clinical decisions or provide clinical recommendations

This analysis is based on your legitimate interests and our legitimate interests in delivering relevant content and funding the Platform through targeted advertising. (See "Lawful Bases for Processing" section above for more information about how we rely on legitimate interests.)

Engagement and Advertising Performance Data

When you interact with sponsored content or advertisements on the Platform, we track:

  • Impressions (when an ad is displayed to you)
  • Clicks and interactions with ads or sponsored content
  • Your engagement with advertiser content or campaigns
  • Whether you submit information through lead capture forms or campaign mechanisms

This engagement data is used to measure advertisement effectiveness and to provide advertisers with performance reports. We may share aggregated and anonymised reporting data with advertisers to show them how many users engaged with their campaigns and the professional context in which their content was displayed, without identifying you individually.

Lead Capture and Direct Data Sharing with Advertisers

Some approved commercial campaigns may include lead capture forms or call-to-action elements where you can voluntarily submit your personal information (such as your name, email address, and practice details) directly to an advertiser. When you choose to engage with these forms, you are providing personal information directly to the advertiser, who becomes an independent Data Controller responsible for that information in accordance with their own privacy practices.

Before you submit personal information through any lead capture mechanism, the Platform will clearly identify the campaign and explain that your information will be shared with the advertiser.

Data Shared with Advertisers and Analytics Partners

We may share the following categories of data with third-party advertisers and analytics providers:

  • Reporting Data: Aggregated and anonymised information about engagement with campaigns, such as impression counts, click-through rates, and general demographic or professional category information, presented in a way that does not identify you individually
  • Engagement Metrics: Aggregated data about interactions with ads across a campaign audience (clicks, impressions, time spent), used for measurement and campaign optimization
  • Professional Context Data: Anonymised information about the professional topics and discussions where ads were displayed, to help advertisers understand the relevance of their placements
  • Voluntary Lead Data: Personal information you voluntarily submit through lead capture forms, shared directly with the advertiser at your request

Apart from voluntarily submitted lead data, we ensure that advertiser reporting does not identify you individually and that aggregated data is presented in a way that prevents re-identification.

Other third-party providers who assist with analytics, communications, or broader campaign support are subject to contractual obligations to maintain confidentiality and process data only for specified purposes consistent with this Privacy Policy.

Affiliates and Business Transfers

If Ask Fellow Optoms is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, restructuring, bankruptcy, or other business transaction or asset sale, we may transfer your personal information as part of that transaction. Where permitted by law, we will use reasonable efforts to notify you of any such change and any choices you may have regarding your personal data.

Business Partners and Investors

We may share anonymised or aggregated information (information that cannot reasonably identify you) with business partners, investors, or other third parties for analysis, planning, product development, or business purposes. This sharing of anonymised data does not involve personal information that can identify you.

Third-Party Websites and Services

The Platform may contain links to third-party websites, applications, advertisements, or external services. We are not responsible for the privacy or security practices of those third parties.

International Transfers

Your data is stored in the United Kingdom and the European Union. Some service providers, such as AI providers (OpenAI and Anthropic) and our email provider (SendGrid), may process data in the United States. Where data is transferred outside the UK, we rely on appropriate safeguards, such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum, or the UK-US data bridge where the provider is certified.

Managing Your Information

You may request to update, correct, or delete certain information about you, or request a copy of your personalisation profile, by contacting us at info@askfellowclinicians.com.

How to Stop Information Collection

You may stop further information collection by uninstalling the application through the usual processes available on your device. Uninstalling the application will stop future data collection through the application, but information previously collected may still be retained where necessary for legitimate business, legal, regulatory, or security purposes.

You may also request deletion of your account by contacting us at info@askfellowclinicians.com.

Data Retention

We retain personal data for as long as necessary to provide our services, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce agreements, maintain security, and support regulatory requirements.

Different categories of data may be retained for different periods, and we aim to delete or anonymise data when it is no longer required.

Activity data used for personalisation, and your personalisation profile, are kept for up to 6 years and then deleted or anonymised. This covers two 3-year CPD cycles. Both are deleted when you delete your account. Audit and security logs are retained separately for as long as needed to meet legal and regulatory obligations.

Your Data Protection Rights

Subject to applicable law, you may have rights in relation to your personal data, including the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict processing, object to certain processing, and request data portability.

Where we rely on consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time.

You have the right to object to profiling. Where profiling is used for advertising, this right is absolute and we will stop when you ask. You can object by contacting info@askfellowclinicians.com.

To exercise your rights, please contact us at info@askfellowclinicians.com.

If you are not satisfied with how we handle your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Tracking Technologies

Cookies and Similar Technologies

We may use cookies, tracking pixels, web beacons, and similar technologies to help operate, secure, customise, and improve the Platform. Some of these technologies may also be used for analytics, advertising, and performance measurement, subject to applicable law and consent requirements.

Most browsers accept cookies by default. You can usually modify your browser settings to remove or reject cookies, although doing so may affect the availability or functionality of certain features.

Where required, we will seek appropriate consent before using non-essential cookies or similar tracking technologies.

Security of Your Information

We implement technical and organisational measures designed to protect personal data, including measures such as encryption, access controls, monitoring, and security safeguards appropriate to the nature of the information we process.

While we take reasonable steps to protect your personal data, no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.