1. About these Terms

1.1 These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of the Synapse Chat application and related services (“Synapse Chat”) provided by Syn App Pty Ltd (ACN 696 168 171, ABN 18 696 168 171), trading as Synapse Chat (“we”, “us”, “our”).
1.2 By creating an account or using Synapse Chat, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use Synapse Chat.
1.3 Our Privacy Policy forms part of these Terms and describes how we handle personal information.
1.4 Some obligations are also shown to you in summary form in the app (for example, the patient-information warranty during onboarding). Those in-app summaries are for convenience; these Terms are the binding agreement.

2. Definitions

2.1 In these Terms: “Your Content” means the messages and other content you send via Synapse Chat; “personal information”, “sensitive information” and “health information” have the meanings given in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth); and “AHPRA” means the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.

3. Eligibility and your account

3.1 You must be at least 18 years old and a registered healthcare practitioner, or another professional eligible for verification on Synapse Chat.
3.2 You must provide accurate, current and complete information when you register, and keep it up to date.
3.3 Verification. Access to Synapse Chat depends on identity verification (via AHPRA registration or sponsored verification). You authorise us to verify your details, including by checking public registers. We may refuse, suspend or revoke access if we cannot verify you, or if your verification is withdrawn.
3.4 Account security. Keep your credentials and device secure. You are responsible for activity that occurs under your account, and must notify us promptly of any unauthorised use.
3.5 Accounts are personal to you and must not be shared or transferred.

4. Licence to use Synapse Chat

4.1 We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Synapse Chat application for its intended purpose, in accordance with these Terms.
4.2 You must not copy, modify, distribute, sell, sub-licence, reverse-engineer or attempt to derive the source code of Synapse Chat, or use it to build a competing product, except to the extent the law permits.

5. Your obligations regarding patient information

This clause 5 is central to your agreement with us and reflects the purpose of Synapse Chat. You must comply with it each time you use the platform.

5.1 No identifiable patient information. You must not enter, send, post or upload to Synapse Chat any personal information or sensitive information (including health information) that is attributable to, or could reasonably identify, a particular patient or other individual. This includes, without limitation: patient names; dates of birth; addresses; Medicare, IHI, UR/MRN or other identifiers; patient records, clinical notes, results or diagnostic information; and any photograph, scan or document containing such information.
5.2 No images or files containing patient information. In particular, you must not send photographs, or upload files or documents, that contain identifiable personal health information.
5.3 De-identify by default. You must de-identify any case you discuss so that no individual can reasonably be identified, using non-identifying references (for example “Bay 3” or “List 2 / case 4”). When in doubt, leave it out.
5.4 Not a clinical record. You acknowledge that Synapse Chat is not, and must not be used as, a patient’s medical record. You must record clinical information that needs to be retained in the patient’s official medical record.
5.5 Warranty. You warrant that you will comply with clauses 5.1 to 5.4 each time you use Synapse Chat, and that any information you enter has been de-identified.
5.6 Effect. These obligations are essential. We may suspend or terminate your access for any breach (clause 14). Compliance with this clause 5 does not transfer to us responsibility for your own professional or legal obligations.

6. Acceptable use

You must use Synapse Chat lawfully and professionally. You must not:

use Synapse Chat for any unlawful, harmful, harassing, misleading or fraudulent purpose;
impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity, registration or affiliation;
introduce malware, attempt to gain unauthorised access, or interfere with the security or operation of Synapse Chat;
scrape, harvest or extract data, or use Synapse Chat to send spam or marketing; or
use Synapse Chat in breach of any applicable law, or of your professional, ethical, registration, confidentiality or employer obligations.

7. Professional responsibility and clinical use

7.1 Communication tool only. Synapse Chat is a communication and coordination tool. It is not a medical device, is not intended to support clinical decision-making, diagnosis or treatment, and must not be relied upon for those purposes.
7.2 Not for emergencies. Synapse Chat must not be used for emergency, resuscitation or other time-critical communication. Use your facility’s established systems for those.
7.3 Your clinical judgment. You remain solely responsible for your clinical decisions and for exercising your own professional judgment. Nothing communicated via Synapse Chat replaces appropriate clinical assessment or established clinical governance.
7.4 Your obligations. You remain responsible for complying with your own professional, ethical, registration, confidentiality and employer obligations when using Synapse Chat.

8. Your content

8.1 You retain any rights you have in Your Content.
8.2 Licence to operate the service. You grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, transmit, process and back up Your Content to the extent necessary to provide, secure and support Synapse Chat and to meet our legal obligations (including legal-hold). Messages are stored encrypted and retained as described in our Privacy Policy.
8.3 Your responsibility. You are responsible for Your Content and for ensuring it complies with these Terms, including clause 5.
8.4 No routine monitoring. We do not routinely monitor or scan the content of messages. We may, however, access, remove or disable content where necessary to comply with law, respond to a report, enforce these Terms, or protect any person.

9. Reporting and moderation

9.1 Synapse Chat provides a way to report a message that should not have been sent. We may investigate reports and take appropriate action through our governance process.
9.2 We may remove content, and suspend or terminate access, where we reasonably consider these Terms have been breached or to protect the platform or any person.

10. Our intellectual property

10.1 We and our licensors own all intellectual property rights in Synapse Chat, including the application, its design, branding, trade marks and underlying software. No rights are granted to you except the licence in clause 4.

11. Security and data

11.1 We take reasonable steps to protect information as described in our Privacy Policy.
11.2 You acknowledge that Synapse Chat is not end-to-end encrypted: we hold the encryption keys so that we can meet legal-hold obligations and respond to lawful requests, and we do not routinely decrypt or scan message content.
11.3 No method of electronic transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

12. Fees

12.1 Some users may access Synapse Chat at no charge; other users (for example, employed staff whose access is paid for by their institution) may be subject to fees. Current pricing, and any free or beta period, will be made available to you before any charge applies.
12.2 We may change fees on reasonable notice.

13. Pre-release (beta)

13.1 Synapse Chat may be provided to you as a pre-release or beta version. It may contain errors, may change, and may be modified or discontinued. To the extent permitted by law, it is provided on an “as is” basis.
13.2 Feedback. If you give us feedback about Synapse Chat, you grant us a perpetual, royalty-free licence to use it without obligation to you.

14. Suspension and termination

14.1 You may stop using Synapse Chat and close your account at any time.
14.2 We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms (including clause 5), if your verification is withdrawn, if we are required to by law, or where reasonably necessary to protect the platform or any person. Where the issue is not serious or urgent, we will give you reasonable notice and, where appropriate, a chance to fix it first. We may act immediately where the issue is serious (for example, a breach of clause 5) or where the law requires.
14.3 On termination, your licence ends. Clauses that by their nature should survive (including clauses 5, 8.2, 10, 15, 16, 17, 20 and 23) survive. Information is retained or deleted as described in our Privacy Policy.

15. Disclaimers

15.1 We provide Synapse Chat “as is.” We work hard to keep Synapse Chat reliable, but, to the extent the law allows, we don’t promise it will always be available, on time, error-free or completely secure. We provide it on an “as is” and “as available” basis.
15.2 Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law. Australian law gives you certain consumer guarantees that cannot be excluded, for example that a service is supplied with due care and skill. Nothing in these Terms removes or limits those guarantees, or any other right you have that the law says cannot be excluded. Where the law lets us limit our responsibility for failing to meet such a guarantee, we limit it to either re-supplying the service, or paying for it to be re-supplied, whichever we choose.

16. Limitation of liability

16.1 Subject to clause 15.2 and to the maximum extent permitted by law: (a) we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for loss of profits, data, goodwill or business; and (b) our total liability arising out of or in connection with these Terms or your use of Synapse Chat is limited to the Synapse Chat fees you paid in the 12 months before the claim, or AUD $20 if you have not paid any fees.
16.2 You acknowledge that Synapse Chat is a communication tool, and that we are not responsible for your clinical decisions or for any breach by you of clause 5 or clause 7.

17. Your responsibility for loss

17.1 You are responsible for loss we reasonably suffer, and for claims made against us by others, to the extent they are directly caused by your breach of clause 5, your misuse of Synapse Chat, or your breach of any law or another person’s rights. Your responsibility is reduced to the extent we caused or contributed to the loss, or could reasonably have avoided it. Nothing in this clause limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law.

18. Privacy

18.1 Our handling of personal information is described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

19. Changes to these Terms

19.1 We may update these Terms from time to time. We will make the current version available in the app. For material changes, we will give you reasonable advance notice. If you do not agree to a change, you can stop using Synapse Chat and close your account before it takes effect; if you continue using Synapse Chat after that, you accept the change.

20. Governing law and disputes

20.1 These Terms are governed by the laws of Queensland, Australia, and you submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of that State and the Commonwealth.
20.2 Before starting proceedings (except for urgent relief), the parties will attempt in good faith to resolve any dispute by negotiation.

21. General

21.1 Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about Synapse Chat.
21.2 Severability. If any part of these Terms is unenforceable, the rest continues in force.
21.3 Waiver. A failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of it.
21.4 Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them on reasonable notice.
21.5 Notices. We may give you notices in the app or by email.
21.6 Force majeure. We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

22. App stores

22.1 You may download Synapse Chat from the Apple App Store or Google Play (each an “App Store”). These Terms are between you and us, not with any App Store provider. The App Store providers are not responsible for Synapse Chat or its content, and are not responsible for providing maintenance or support for it.
22.2 Your use of Synapse Chat must also comply with the applicable App Store provider’s terms.
22.3 If Synapse Chat does not conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify the relevant App Store provider, and (for a paid app) that provider may refund the purchase price to you; to the maximum extent permitted by law, the App Store provider has no other warranty obligation for Synapse Chat. We, not the App Store provider, are responsible for addressing any claim relating to Synapse Chat, including product-liability, legal or regulatory, and intellectual-property claims.
22.4 You confirm that you are not located in a country subject to a relevant trade embargo, and that you are not on a relevant list of prohibited or restricted parties.
22.5 The App Store providers and their subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you.

23. Your data when you leave

23.1 You can close your account at any time, in the app or by contacting us.
23.2 You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you at any time (see our Privacy Policy).
23.3 When you close your account, we delete or de-identify your personal information as described in our Privacy Policy, except where we are required to retain it (for example, encrypted records kept for legal-hold). Because of the way Synapse Chat is secured, some retained information is held encrypted and is accessed only where the law requires; it generally cannot be individually retrieved or selectively deleted.
23.4 Unless the law requires otherwise, closing your account does not entitle you to a refund of fees already paid.

24. Contact us

Questions about these Terms can be directed to:

Syn App Pty Ltd
Email: support@synapsechat.app
Post: 255 David Low Way, Peregian Beach QLD 4573

Terms of Service