Privacy Policy

Guide Star Health, LLC ("Guide Star," "we," "us," "our")
Effective date: 2026-07-27
Last updated: 2026-10-26

1. Who we are and what this covers

Guide Star Health provides a personalized, AI-assisted information service that helps people living with a chronic condition — currently Parkinson's disease — and the family members and caregivers who support them, get answers tailored to their situation (the "Service"). You tell us about yourself once, and we use that context to make the answers you get more relevant. We expect to add additional conditions over time; this Policy applies regardless of which one applies to you.

This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use and share it, and the choices you have. It applies to the Service at app.guidestarhealth.net and related apps, and to our public website at guidestarhealth.net.

Important health note. Guide Star provides general information and support. It is not a medical provider, does not provide medical advice, and is not a substitute for your doctor. See our Terms of Use.

HIPAA. Guide Star is not a health care provider, a health plan, or another organization covered by the federal health privacy law known as HIPAA, and we do not handle your information on behalf of one. HIPAA therefore does not apply to the information you give us. That information is protected by this Policy and by the consumer privacy and data security laws that apply to us.

2. Information we collect

a. Account information. Name, email address, and password when you create an account. We may also store a preferred name, time zone, display preferences, and an optional profile photo (or you can use a generated color-and-initials avatar instead).

b. Health and profile information you provide. To personalize answers, you may give us information such as your role (person with the condition, caregiver, or family member), diagnosis and diagnosis date, goals, ZIP code, and free-text notes you add about yourself, plus condition-specific details — for Parkinson's disease: disease stage, medications and dosing schedule, and symptoms. This is sensitive health information, and we treat it as such (see Security). Some of this information may be entered by an account owner (such as a caregiver) about another person — the person living with the condition — rather than about themselves; see Section 9 (Profiles created on behalf of another person).

c. Conversations. The questions you ask and the answers the Service generates. To produce a tailored answer, your question is combined with relevant profile context before it is processed (see "AI processing" below). We retain your conversation history so you don't have to re-explain yourself.

d. Feedback. When you rate an answer (thumbs up/down) and any optional note you add about what was helpful or not, plus anything you submit through the "Feedback" form. The Feedback form asks at the time of submission whether we may share what you wrote publicly if it is a good story (e.g., as a testimonial) — we only do so with that consent, and never using your name without asking separately first.

e. Care Circle information. If you invite family members or friends into a shared "Care Circle," you give us their email address and we send the invitation email to them on your behalf. If they accept and register, we also collect their account information and their stated relationship to the person whose profile is shared. They get read-only access to that shared profile and their own private chat history, separate from yours and every other member's. If you share a specific chat answer with your Care Circle, that answer becomes visible only to the other active members of your Care Circle — not to any other Guide Star user, and not to anyone outside the Service.

If the person with Parkinson's joins a Care Circle owned by someone else, such as a caregiver, the account owner controls their health profile. This includes adding, editing, sharing, and deleting it. The person with Parkinson's can view the profile and use it in conversations, and sees lab and workout data only if the owner chooses to share it.

f. Voice input (optional). If you use the microphone/"speak your question" feature, your spoken words are converted to text using your browser's or device's built-in speech recognition — not a Guide Star service. Depending on your browser and device, your audio may be sent to the browser or operating-system provider (for example, Google for Chrome, or Apple for Safari) to perform the transcription, subject to that provider's privacy policy. Guide Star receives only the resulting text, which is then treated like any other question you type. If you prefer not to use device-based speech recognition, simply type your questions instead.

g. Technical and usage information. Standard server and application logs (e.g., IP address, device/browser type, timestamps, error and performance data) used to operate and secure the Service. We also record which of Ask Guide Star's example questions you tap, and whether you then sent it unchanged, so we can tell which examples are useful; we don't record what you write with them.

h. Our public website. When you visit guidestarhealth.net, we use Plausible Analytics to count visits in aggregate (for example, which pages are viewed and which site referred you). Plausible does not use cookies and does not tell us who you are. If you arrive through a campaign or referral link, the website remembers that source for the rest of your visit (in your browser's session storage, cleared when you close the tab) and passes it along if you sign up, so we know how you found us. Some pages also include a video embedded from YouTube, using YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode. Because the player loads from YouTube's servers, YouTube (Google) receives standard technical information such as your IP address and browser type, and once you play the video, YouTube may set cookies or similar storage on your device. YouTube's handling of that information is governed by Google's Privacy Policy, not this one. You can instead watch the video directly on YouTube using the link beneath it.

i. Payment information. If you subscribe, your card and billing details are collected and processed directly by our payment provider, Stripe, under Stripe's own privacy policy. We never see or store your full card number. From Stripe we keep only what we need to run your membership: a customer reference, your subscription status, and your trial and billing dates.

j. Caregiver notebook. If you care for someone living with the condition, you can keep a private notebook in the Service: entries you write, and the short reply the Service generates to each one. Only you can see your notebook in the app. The person you care for cannot see it, the other members of your Care Circle cannot see it, and it is excluded from the support view described in Section 6. To generate a reply, the entry you just wrote, your recent entries, and your relationship to the person you care for are sent to our AI provider (see Section 4); the health profile is not sent. Notebook entries are not used to answer questions you ask elsewhere in the Service and are not saved to Memory.

The notebook has three optional extras. A note you might share: you can ask the Service to rewrite one entry as a gentler note. To write it, that one entry is sent to our AI provider. The note is shown only to you, to edit and copy; we do not store it, and the Service does not send it to anyone. A weekly reflection: if you wrote at least twice in the past week, you can ask for a short reflection on that week. To write it, that week's entries and your relationship to the person you care for are sent to our AI provider. We keep one reflection at a time. A reminder email: if you have written in your notebook and then not for two weeks, we send one email to say it is there. The email says nothing about what you wrote, and you can switch it off on the notebook page.

k. Documents you upload. You can upload documents such as lab reports and screenshots of workout summaries (PDF, PNG, or JPEG). We store the file, read the text in it, and pull out specific values, such as a lab result and its date. You review those values before they are used. Once you confirm them, they become part of your profile context and can be used to personalize answers (see Section 4). Confirmed values are visible only to you unless you choose to share them with your Care Circle. Uploaded documents often contain sensitive health information, and may include details you did not mean to share, such as an address or an account number. Please check a document before you upload it.

l. Memory. If you ask the Service to remember something, or you confirm a suggestion to remember it, we save that detail as a short note and include it in the context for your future questions. Nothing is saved to Memory without your request or confirmation. You can see every saved detail on the Memory page and delete any of them.

m. Community and direct messages. The Service includes a shared Community room and member-to-member direct messages. What you post in the Community room is visible to other members, along with your display name and avatar. The name shown is a chat display name that you choose before your first post or direct message. You can send a direct message to another member from a post they have made in the Community room. A direct message is visible only to you and that member. Either of you can block the other, which stops messages in both directions. Posts and messages can be reported. Reported content, including a reported direct message, may be reviewed by Guide Star personnel or by members we have designated as moderators, who can remove content that breaks our Terms. Community posts and direct messages are not sent to our AI provider and are not used to answer your questions.

n. Appointment lists. You can make lists to help you get ready for a healthcare appointment and to record what happened at it: an appointment prep list and a visit recap. You choose the type of provider and the date, and you can answer a few short questions, such as what has changed since your last visit, or your notes on what was decided at it. Questions a visit recap marks as not answered, and its open follow-ups, are added to your next prep list for the same type of provider. To draft the list, your answers are sent to our AI provider together with your health profile and, for a prep list, your medication list and what your last visit recap carried over (see Section 4). Saved Memory details, uploaded documents, and your chat history are not used. Your answers are also checked automatically for signs of an emergency, and if they describe one, the Service shows emergency guidance before it drafts anything. We store each list, its lines, and your answers, so you can edit, print, and redraft it. Your lists are private unless you choose to share one with your Care Circle. Other members can't see them. A list you share can be read and printed by the active members of your own Care Circle, and they can add questions to an appointment list, marked with their name. Only you can change or remove the rest of the list, and you can stop sharing it at any time. If a member leaves or is removed from your Care Circle, the questions they added stay on your list, marked as from a former member. Lists are not saved to Memory and are not used to answer your questions.

o. Hospital card. You can make a hospital card to show, print, or let staff scan if you go to an emergency room or hospital. It is built from your health profile (your name, date of birth, diagnosis year, medicines and their dose times, and your neurologist) together with details you add on the card: drug and other allergies, other medical conditions, whether you have a deep brain stimulator (and, if you add them, its maker and your programming clinic's phone number) or a medicine pump, how staff can help you communicate, what is normal for you day to day (such as how you usually walk, talk, and think), your primary care doctor and pharmacy, and up to two emergency contacts. If you add an emergency contact, you are giving us that person's name, relationship to you, and phone number; please add only people who have agreed to be contacted. The card's warnings (for example, medicines to avoid) are fixed text reviewed by Guide Star, not written by AI, and your card is not sent to our AI provider. We store what you add so the card stays up to date with your profile, and we note when you last printed or checked it so we can remind you when it may be out of date.

Doses you record. If you, or the person with Parkinson's in your Care Circle, tap "Took it" for a Parkinson's medicine, we record which medicine and when, and who tapped. The card shows the most recent dose for 12 hours, on screen, in the on-screen QR code, and in copied text only; it is never printed or put on the lock-screen image. We delete these records after 7 days.

The QR code on your card is a link to a Guide Star page. Your card's information is inside the code itself, in the part of the link after the "#". Phones and browsers do not send that part to Guide Star or anyone else, so scanning it does not send your card to us. Opening the page needs an internet connection. The phone that scans it may keep the link, and so the card, in its browser history. The same applies to a printed card or a saved lock-screen image: whoever can see it can read it. Keep printed copies as you would any medical document.

When you print a wallet card, we create the file when you ask and do not keep it.

Your card is private unless you choose to share it with your Care Circle. You can turn on "Can see hospital card" for a member on your Care Circle page; a member you pick as an emergency contact is turned on automatically, and you can turn it off. A member marked as the person with Parkinson's can always see their own card. Members can view, print, and save the card but cannot change it. The person with Parkinson's can send you a note about something to correct; the note is deleted when you mark it done.

We do not intentionally collect more sensitive categories than needed to run the Service, and we ask you to share only what you're comfortable sharing.

3. How we use your information

To provide the Service — to generate personalized answers by combining your question with your stored profile context.
To maintain your account and your conversation history.
To improve the Service — including reviewing answers you rate "thumbs down," together with the question and the context that produced them, so we can improve quality and accuracy. This review is limited to authorized personnel (see Security).
To communicate with you about your account, support requests, and important changes.
To keep the Service safe and reliable — security, fraud/abuse prevention, troubleshooting, and enforcing our Terms.
To comply with law and respond to lawful requests.

We do not use your health or conversation content for advertising, and we do not sell it.

4. AI processing and third-party providers

The Service uses a third-party large language model ("AI provider"), currently Anthropic's Claude models, to generate answers and to power the features listed below. We may add or change AI providers in the future.

What we send to the AI provider. Depending on the feature you use, we send:

When you ask a question: your question, the earlier messages in that conversation, and your profile context. Profile context can include your health profile, medications, symptoms, saved Memory details, and values from documents you have uploaded and confirmed.
When you upload a document: the text read from the document, so that specific values can be identified.
When you add a free-text note to your profile: the note, so the Service can suggest medications or symptoms to add.
When you ask the Service to remember something: the detail to be saved and your existing saved details, so it can be checked against them and worded clearly.
When a new conversation starts: your question and the beginning of the answer, so the conversation can be given a title.
When you use the caregiver notebook: the content described in Section 2(j).
When you make an appointment list: your answers, your health profile and, for a prep list, your medication list and what your last visit recap carried over, as described in Section 2(n). Saved Memory, uploaded documents, and chat history are not sent.
Your hospital card is not sent to our AI provider. Its warnings are fixed text, and everything else on it is information you entered (Section 2(o)).

We send the AI provider only what the feature you are using needs.

How uploaded documents are read. Before any text reaches the AI provider, the file is read by Microsoft Azure AI Document Intelligence, a text-recognition service that is part of our Microsoft Azure hosting.

The AI provider's role. We use these providers under their commercial API terms. The AI provider is a service provider/processor acting on our behalf, not an independent controller of your data, to the extent provided by our agreement with them.

Anthropic's data handling. Under Anthropic's commercial terms:

Anthropic does not use content submitted through its commercial API to train its models.
Anthropic deletes your questions and Claude's responses from its systems within 30 days, except where it must keep them longer to enforce its usage policies or comply with the law.
During that period, Anthropic may access that content for safety and security purposes.

5. How we share information

We share personal information only as described here:

Service providers/processors who help us operate the Service under contract — cloud hosting and database (Microsoft Azure), including document storage and the text-recognition service that reads uploaded documents (Section 4), the AI provider (Section 4), outbound account email such as confirmation, password reset, and notification messages (Microsoft Azure Communication Services), subscription payments (Stripe, see Section 2(i)), and similar infrastructure vendors. They may use the information only to provide services to us.
Care Circle members — if you (or an account owner) invite someone into a Care Circle, the shared profile is visible to them as described at the time of invitation. Inviting someone is a deliberate, consented sharing of health information. If you share a specific chat answer or an appointment list with your Care Circle, it becomes visible to every other active member of that same circle (a shared list until you stop sharing it). If you let a member see your hospital card, they can view, print, and save it until you turn it off (Section 2(o)).
Care Circle invitations — when you invite someone into your Care Circle, we send the invitation email to the address you provide, on your behalf, using the email infrastructure described above.
Other members — what you post in the Community room is visible to other members, and a direct message is visible to the member you send it to (Section 2(m)).
Legal and safety — when we reasonably believe disclosure is required by law, or necessary to protect the rights, safety, or property of users, the public, or Guide Star.
Business transfers — in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, subject to this Policy.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

6. Data security

We treat your profile and conversation content as sensitive and protect it with measures including:

Encryption in transit and at rest.
Access controls — health and conversation content is accessible only to authorized Guide Star personnel who need it to operate or improve the Service (for example, the limited review of thumbs-down feedback described in Section 3, or when resolving a support request or investigating a problem requires us to view your account as you see it). That support view is read-only, requires a recorded reason each time, and is logged. It does not show the caregiver notebook (Section 2(j)).
Authentication, logging, and other administrative and technical safeguards.

No method of storage or transmission is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Data retention and minimization

We keep personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service, and thereafter only as needed for legitimate business or legal purposes. We aim to minimize what we collect and how long we keep it.

Monthly profile snapshots (a point-in-time copy of your symptoms, medications, and goals, used to notice changes over time and remind you to keep your profile current) are kept for 13 months, then automatically deleted.
Caregiver notebook entries are kept until you delete them. Deleting an entry removes it, and the reply to it, from the Service immediately; there is no waiting period and it cannot be recovered. A weekly reflection is kept until you dismiss it, ask for a new one, or delete an entry it was written from, and is then deleted the same way.
Appointment lists are kept until you delete them or delete your account. Deleting a list removes it, every line on it, and your answers right away.
Doses recorded on your hospital card ("Took it") are deleted after 7 days.
Your hospital card is kept until you delete your account. Changing your card or profile updates it right away; earlier versions are not kept, except that we keep a code (not the content) that tells us whether your last printed copy is out of date. Notes from the person with Parkinson's are deleted when you mark them done. Copies you print, save, or share outside the Service are yours to keep or destroy; we cannot delete them.
Uploaded documents and the values taken from them are kept until you delete them or delete your account. A deleted file stays recoverable in our storage for 7 days and is then gone.
Memory details are kept until you delete them. A deleted detail is permanently erased after a 10-day grace period.
The full text sent to the AI provider for each answer is kept for 30 days and then deleted, except for answers you rated thumbs down that we have not yet reviewed (Section 3).
Community posts and direct messages stay in the Service until your account is deleted. If you delete a post or message, it is removed from view for everyone, but we keep the text so we can act on reports. When you delete your account, your posts are permanently deleted, and every direct-message conversation you were part of is deleted for both people.
Deleting your account (Section 8) permanently removes your profile, conversation history, uploaded documents, Memory details, and other account data from the Service right away. We keep a minimal record of the deletion: your name, your email address, your account number, the date, how the deletion was started, and how many Care Circle members were notified. We keep it so we can confirm the deletion if you ask, resolve disputes, and prevent misuse of the Service. It contains none of your health or conversation content. Messages you sent through Contact Support are stored separately from your account and are also kept.
Backups. Like most online services, we keep encrypted backups of our database so we can recover from a failure. Information you delete may remain in those backups for up to 7 days until they expire; it is not restored to the Service or used in the meantime.

8. Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to:

Access the personal information we hold about you;
Correct inaccurate information (you can edit much of your profile directly);
Export/port a copy of your information — available any time from your account's "Data & Privacy" page as a downloadable file;
Delete your information and close your account — available any time from the same "Data & Privacy" page (you'll be asked to re-enter your password to confirm). This permanently deletes your account, profile, conversation history, uploaded documents, and Memory details (we keep only the minimal deletion record described in Section 7) — it is not a deactivation, and we cannot recover it afterward. If you are a Care Circle Owner, deleting your account also ends every other member's access to that shared profile; we email everyone affected (including you) to confirm. If you'd rather not do this yourself, contact us at privacy@guidestarhealth.net and we can do it for you;
Withdraw consent to optional sharing (e.g., a Care Circle invitation).

To make a request, contact us at privacy@guidestarhealth.net. We will verify your request and respond as required by applicable law.

State-specific note. Residents of certain states have additional rights regarding "sensitive" or "consumer health" data.

9. Profiles created on behalf of another person

Some accounts are set up by a caregiver or family member who creates and manages a profile about the person living with the condition (the "subject") rather than about themselves.

The account owner controls the profile and is responsible for the information they provide about the subject and for keeping it accurate.
Authority and consent. By entering another person's information, the account owner represents to us that they have that person's consent, or the legal authority (such as a power of attorney, healthcare proxy, or guardianship), to (a) provide that person's information to Guide Star, (b) use the Service on that person's behalf, and (c) share that person's information with anyone they later invite into a Care Circle.
We rely on those representations and are not able to independently verify family relationships or legal authority.
If you are the subject of a profile someone else created and manages, you may contact us at privacy@guidestarhealth.net to access, correct, or request deletion of information about you, or to object to its processing. We will handle such requests as required by applicable law; because the account owner manages the profile, we may need to coordinate with them to do so.

10. Children's privacy

The Service is intended for adults (18+) and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

11. International users

The Service is operated in the United States and is intended only for U.S. residents. We do not currently support or knowingly offer the Service to individuals located outside the United States.

12. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time. We will post the updated version with a new "Last updated" date and, for material changes, provide additional notice as appropriate.

13. Contact us

Guide Star Health, LLC 3132 Falkland Rd, Carrollton, TX 75007 privacy@guidestarhealth.net