Terms of Use

What CarePathIQ is, and is not

CarePathIQ is authoring software. Clinicians use it to build evidence-graded, consensus-reviewed care pathways and to produce documents for people and structured files for software (the formats an EHR team or an AI system loads).

It is not intended for use as a medical device, and it does not diagnose, treat, or make clinical decisions. Everything it produces is a draft for qualified clinicians to review, edit, and take responsibility for; AI-drafted content is marked. We do not review or approve individual pathways. A pathway is fit for clinical use only after your own clinicians approve it under your own governance, and your institution is responsible for anything it deploys.

Your account

You need an account to author pathways. At registration your NPI (National Provider Identifier) is checked against the public national registry. A confirmed individual clinician NPI is approved automatically; an answer that does not confirm it is declined rather than held for review; and if the registry cannot be reached, your registration waits for a person, because an outage is not evidence about you. The AI Studio and its AI Assistant are for people with a verified NPI. People without one can still answer a survey or complete an education module from an invitation link, without an account. An account opened earlier with a workshop access code is not marked verified, and after 60 days pathway drafting and evidence search stop until an NPI is added; you can always sign in and always add one. Keep your sign-in secure, tell us if you think it has been compromised, and do not share an account. Invite people instead.

The product is for clinicians, trainees, and the people who support them; it is not for patients. You must be at least 18 to hold an account.

Accounts opened from an invitation. If someone invites you to answer a consensus round, a frontline survey or an approval form, or to confirm that you co-authored a pathway, you can open a free account from the link we offer after you answer. You agree to these terms first. No NPI or password is needed: the link you were sent is how you sign in, so do not forward it. That account shows the invitations sent to your email address and whether you answered them, the education modules you complete, and the Library to read. It cannot draft pathways, search evidence, use AI features, adapt a Library pathway or send invitations. An invitation link never signs in to an author’s account.

Limits you should know before you rely on us. A working pathway is kept for 365 days from the last time you write to it, and is then removed, so download any version you have published. A single pathway is limited to 1 MB. On the Individual and Pro plans you may keep three unpublished pathways at a time; publishing one to the Library frees its place. Enterprise has no such limit. These are limits on the working copy in your account. A version you publish to the Library is a different thing: it stays at its permanent link and is never deleted, as described under The Library, except that reported patient information is removed from it (see Patient information).

Who owns what you author

You do. You keep ownership of what you create. We host it so the product works; the services that process it for you (our hosting and the AI provider) are listed in the Privacy Policy. We do not train models on your private work. Nothing you write is shared with anyone, including any institution you are employed by or training at, unless you choose it under The Library below, you join a group (see Groups below), or you are a trainee and choose to share one pathway with your program as milestone evidence (see Trainee attestation below).

Trainee attestation. If you are a trainee, you can submit a pathway you authored as your own scholarly work, and say which training milestones it documents. You do that on the pathway itself, by confirming this sentence: this pathway is my own scholarly work; share it with my program as evidence for the milestones I selected. That sentence is recorded with the submission. It appears on your program’s milestone dashboard only because you sent it, and it shows the pathway, the milestones you selected, and the date. You can withdraw at any time: unshare that one pathway from the pathway itself, which deletes the submission, or switch off every submission at once in your identity settings. Apart from this and a group you join, nothing you save is visible to your program or your institution.

Groups. Anyone with an account can create a group and invite people to it with a code. When you join, you confirm one sentence: my group admin can see my name, my role, my pathways (each one view only, with its survey results) and the education modules I complete, while I am in the group. We record that you confirmed it, when, and which version of these terms was in force. The admin sees the role you set in your Profile, can read your pathways and their survey results, without the names or emails of the people you surveyed, and sees which education modules you completed online and your score. The admin cannot change or publish your pathways. You can leave a group at any time in My Dashboard, and the admin can remove you; either way the admin’s access ends at once. A group admin can instead set the group to show totals only. Then the sentence you confirm is: my group admin sees only totals across the group (for example, the share of members who published a pathway), never my name, my pathways or my results, while I am in the group. The admin sees counts and percentages across the members who are not admins, and none at all until at least five such members have joined. If the admin later switches the group to show each member, you stay in the totals only, unless you join again with a new code.

Education modules. When you complete an education module someone shares with you, we record the completion under your account: the module, your score and the date. The person who shared it sees how many people completed it, not who. The admin of a group you are in sees your completions, as described above.

We, or our licensors, own the software, the pathway schema, the review instrument, the consensus method, and the evidence registry. Nothing here transfers any of that to you.

The Library

Drafts stay private on every plan. On Individual and Pro, you publish a version to the Library before you download or share it. On Enterprise, you may keep a published version private to your organization. Your click to publish records your choice and which version of these terms you accepted.

When you publish to the Library, you grant CarePathIQ a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license to reproduce, reformat, display, distribute, and sublicense that version, to use it in our software, and to train models. We may sublicense it to Studio account holders, to Enterprise customers (including in the formats an EHR team builds from), and to other companies for use in their products, such as AI and EHR software. Wherever we or they display or distribute it, your name and its version number go with it. Shared: the pathway’s steps, the evidence it cites, its grades, and its patient version if you confirmed one. Never shared: anything about a patient. You keep every other right, including publishing the same pathway anywhere else.

When you publish, you confirm that the pathway is your work, that you have the right to publish it, and that it contains no patient information. That confirmation is recorded with the version.

Co-authors. When you publish, you may list co-authors with their email addresses. We email each one a link to confirm. Only you and the co-authors who confirm are named in the version’s citation, its Pathway Paper and, if a DOI is later registered for it, its DOI record, together with an ORCID iD a co-author adds. A co-author who declines or does not answer is not named. A co-author can withdraw that consent at any time by emailing contact@carepathiq.org; we then remove their name and ORCID iD from the version’s Library page and from the Pathway Paper we provide. We cannot recall copies made before then, such as downloads, citations elsewhere, or records already sent to a DOI registry.

Society guidelines. When you publish, you say whether the pathway draws on a guideline or policy from a professional society. If it does, you name the society, the guideline, its year and a DOI, PubMed ID (PMID) or web address for it, and you confirm that you wrote the pathway in your own words, that it cites the guideline, and that it copies no text, tables or figures from it. The pathway’s title may not use the society’s name. The Library shows “Based on [society] [year] policy” and states that the society has not reviewed or endorsed the pathway. Publishing to the Library does not mean that any society has reviewed, approved or endorsed a pathway. You remain responsible for having the right to publish what you publish.

If a society raises a concern. A society, or someone acting for one, who believes a pathway copies its guideline or suggests its endorsement can email contact@carepathiq.org. We withdraw that version from the Library while we review the concern: its page shows a notice instead of the pathway, it leaves the listings and search, and no one can build on it. We may keep it withdrawn. Your own copy in the AI Studio is not changed.

The patient version. If you confirm patient text for a pathway (plain-language steps and questions the care team may ask patients), it is published with the version as the Patient side of the care-team view and is covered by the license above. Only text you confirm is published. You are responsible for checking that it matches your pathway and reads correctly for patients. It describes what usually happens on the pathway; it is general information, not medical advice for any patient, and does not replace the care team’s judgment. CarePathIQ does not collect patients’ answers to those questions.

The Approval Record. Each version you publish to the Library carries its full Approval Record: every decision recorded while you built it (what was chosen, what was recommended, the reason, the role that decided and the date) and your review log. We also keep its working record: your frontline testers’ answers and comments, your consensus rounds, votes and comments, your case simulation results, the grading reasons, and your targets, rollout plan and local material (local protocols, divergence notes and care-variation summaries, never patient-level data). Both name roles, never people; testers, panelists and raters appear only as labels. The Library page shows only a summary. CarePathIQ keeps both with the version, and the license above covers them, so we may use them in our software and include them when we provide or license that version.

That license reaches only the versions you publish to the Library. It never reaches your drafts, a version kept private to an Enterprise organization, the documents you uploaded, or your local policies.

Retiring, not deleting. A version in the Library stays at its permanent link so that citations, later versions, and deployments built on it keep working. You can retire it at any time: it leaves the listings and its page shows a notice with your reason. Retired versions are not deleted. On request we remove your name from a retired version. If anyone believes a shared pathway contains patient information or content an institution treats as confidential, email contact@carepathiq.org; we hide it while we look. The one exception to keeping a version as it was published is reported patient information: we remove it from the version, published or retired, as described under Patient information.

Patient information

Do not enter protected health information into the product. You are responsible for what you type, paste or upload, and for keeping patient identifiers out of it. The AI Studio checks for possible identifiers in two places. A safety event summary is checked before it is sent: you edit it or submit it as typed, and we record your choice and the kinds of identifiers flagged, never the flagged words. The public content of a pathway (its text, Pathway Paper and patient version) is checked before you publish: you remove each flagged word or confirm it is not patient information, and each confirmation is recorded in the Approval Record by kind and place, never the word. Images you attach to a step, a care-variation data file and case-review programs keep their own checks. Other places, such as scope fields, uploaded policies and the chat, are not checked. These checks are an extra safeguard, not a guarantee: they can miss identifiers, and passing one, or choosing to continue, does not make entering patient information permitted. The only exception is a HIPAA-compliant Enterprise service that your institution enables under a signed business associate agreement with us. Everywhere else the product is built on the assumption that it holds no patient information.

If patient information is entered. Anyone who finds patient information in CarePathIQ, including the person who entered it, can report it to contact@carepathiq.org with the subject “PHI report”. Say where it is (the pathway, form or page, and the date). Do not send the information itself. Within 2 business days of the report we acknowledge it and take any public copy offline, such as a Library page, Pathway Paper or patient version. Within 45 days of the report we remove the information from every copy CarePathIQ holds, by deleting it or replacing it with “[removed on report]” and the date, including in published and retired Library versions, and we tell the person who reported it. Some copies are outside our reach or expire on their own schedule: what remains in your own browser, short-term backups and logs kept by our hosting provider, and copies kept by our AI and email providers under their own terms. We tell the person who reported it which ones. If the person who entered it belongs to a group or program on CarePathIQ, we may tell its admin that a report was handled, without repeating the information. We keep a record of each report and what was removed for six years; it never contains the information itself. Removing information after a report does not make entering it permitted.

AI keys and the shared allowance

You may use your own Google Gemini API key. It stays in your browser, we never receive it, and its costs and Google’s terms are yours. The shared allowance is a one-time starter allowance, enough to build about one pathway; after that, continue with your own key. Do not try to get around these limits.

Data about your use

The Studio records how it is used, keyed to your NPI. We may publish aggregate, de-identified statistics from it, and we will not identify you, your content, or your institution without your agreement. The Privacy Policy lists exactly what is recorded.

Acceptable use

Do not use the product to break the law, infringe anyone’s rights, upload malicious code, attempt unauthorized access, or present a pathway as validated, endorsed, or approved by CarePathIQ when it is not.

Changes and availability

We may change, suspend, or discontinue features. We will give reasonable notice of material changes to paid plans. Free access comes as-is, with no uptime commitment.

We may also update these terms. The version in force and the date it was last updated are always on this page. Before a material change takes effect we will announce it here and by email to the address on your account; using the product after that date accepts it, and your next publish click records the version you accepted.

One promise is outside this. We will not use a change to these terms to weaken our commitment not to train models on your private work, for anything you created while that commitment was in force. If we ever change that commitment going forward, it will not reach back.

Warranties and liability

The service is provided “as is,” without warranties of any kind, to the extent the law allows. We are not liable for clinical decisions, patient outcomes, or the content of any pathway. Our total liability is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim; if you paid nothing, it is nothing. These limits apply to the fullest extent the law allows.

Termination

You may close your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. When an account closes you lose access, so download what you want to keep first. Published versions stay at their permanent link, as described under The Library.

Governing law

New York law governs these terms, without regard to its conflict of laws rules.

Contact

Email: contact@carepathiq.org

Mail:

CarePathIQ
1280 Lexington Ave FRNT 2 #1149
New York, NY 10028
United States

See also the Privacy Policy.