Last Updated on 19th Jan 2024

PLEASE READ THIS ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY BEFORE USING THIS APP AND WEBSITE

Our Acceptable Use Policy sets out the permitted uses and prohibited uses of our app and website. When using our app and website, you must comply with this Acceptable Use Policy.

IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW

LinkOMed requires all Members to behave in a highly professional and polite manner at all times. Our app and website provide an inclusive global network for training, discussion, case sharing, education and a range of related activities in various branches of medicine, and related fields.

Our app and website is a professional medical network with educational content and discussion facilities. Our Members can search for people, cases, events, groups and institutions. Members can communicate with other Members through case discussion and LinkOMed Messenger. On joining LinkOMed, Members create a profile that will be displayed on the app and website that includes personal information and descriptions that can be determined and edited by the Member. Members can edit their profile and unsubscribe from the service at any time.

WHO DO WE OFFER LinkOMed MEMBERSHIP TO?

Individual Membership is for doctors, medical students and registered healthcare professionals involved directly in patient care. Our website and app is made available free of charge for Individual Members.

Institutional Membership is for hospitals, clinics, societies, companies and other organizations authorized by LinkOMed. Please contact  support@linkomed.com for information on pricing.

Restricted Membership is available to individuals and organizations not listed above only with the prior written consent of LinkOMed, including but not restricted to the following groups: medical industry companies, their employees and agents, including but not restricted to companies involved in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, devices, equipment and the provision of such industry services; print, broadcast and online journalists; employees of print, broadcast or online media providers or publishers. Any individual in such groups who registers as a Member without the prior written consent of LinkOMed is liable to pay a fee, which is currently set £20,000.

Please contact  support@linkomed.com if you are not eligible, or unsure if you are eligible, for Individual or Institutional Membership but would be like to be considered for membership or to discuss commercial partnership opportunities.

We reserve the right to change our fees from time to time at our discretion. If we terminate your Membership because you have breached these our Terms of Service, you shall not be entitled to the refund of any unused portion of subscription fees. Likewise, if you terminate membership of LinkOMed you shall not be entitled to any refund of your subscription fee.

REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES

Membership of LinkOMed is void where prohibited. By using LinkOMed Services, you represent and warrant that:

• All registration information submitted is truthful and accurate;
• Users will maintain the accuracy of such information;
• Users are 18 years of age or older; and
• Use of the Services does not violate any applicable law or regulation in the User’s country of residence.

By joining LinkOMed for Individual Membership, you represent and warrant that you are a doctor, medical student, dentist, dental student, nurse or registered healthcare professional involved directly in patient care.

Memberships may be terminated without warning, if you break any of the above representations and warrants.

COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES ON LinkOMed

The Services are for the personal use of Members only and may not be used in connection with any commercial activities except those that are specifically endorsed or approved by LinkOMed. Unauthorised and/or illegal use of the Services, including collecting usernames and/or email addresses of Members by electronic or other means for the purpose of sending unsolicited email or unauthorised framing of or linking to the Website is prohibited.

Commercial advertisements, affiliate links, and other forms of solicitation may be removed from Member profiles without notice and may result in termination of Membership or specific services. Appropriate legal action will be taken for any illegal or unauthorised use of the Services. A fee will be levied for unauthorised advertising or promotion without the prior written consent of LinkOMed, which is currently set at £20,000.

CREATING A SAFE AND PROFESSIONAL NETWORK

LinkOMed aims to create a safe and professional network for members and users of LinkOMed services. We cannot ensure this but makes best efforts to attempt to do so. As such, you agree to behave in a secure and appropriate manner in relation to all of our Services, to include, but not limited to the following:

• Not to bully, threaten, or harass, or otherwise, any User;
• Not to post unacceptable or inappropriate content, including content that is intimidating, or pornographic, or provokes violence, or contains nudity, or unnecessary violence;
• Not to use our Services to do anything unlawful, misrepresentative, hateful, or prejudiced;
• Not to ask (or otherwise) for login information or access an account belonging to someone else;
• Not to upload viruses/malicious code;
• Not to immobilise, overload, or damage the proper working or appearance of our Website, our App and our Services;
• Not to collect Users' content or information using automated means;
• Not to post unauthorised commercial communications on our app, website or any of our Services.
• Not to enable, or incite any violations of the Acceptable Use Policy, Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Member profiles may not include the following items:

• any photographs containing nudity, or obscene, lewd, excessively violent, harassing, sexually explicit or otherwise objectionable subject matter,
• any fake, inaccurate or misleading information.

LinkOMed assumes no responsibility or liability for any material made available on its Services by any Member. If Users become aware of misuse of the Services by any person or organisation, they should contact us immediately at  support@linkomed.com.

Users agree that we may rely on a User’s Registration Data as accurate, current and complete. Users acknowledge that if any of their Member profile is considered to be untrue, inaccurate, not current or incomplete in any respect by us then we reserve the right to update Member profile information or terminate services with the User. We also reserve the right to seek suitable recompense for any liability incurred by LinkOMed, Users or any third party.

We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to reject, refuse to post or remove any content or message by any User, or to restrict, suspend, or terminate a User’s access to all or any part of the Services at any time, for any or no reason, with or without prior notice, and without liability. We also reserve the right to exclude Users who misuse their access to the Services, including but not limited to those who abuse or threaten other Users or misuse the Services.

UPLOADING CONTENT TO OUR APP AND WEBSITE

We may delete Content that, in our sole judgment, is deemed to violate this policy or our Terms of Service which may be offensive, illegal or violate the rights, harm, or threaten the safety of any person. LinkOMed assumes no responsibility for monitoring the Services for inappropriate Content or conduct. If at any time LinkOMed chooses, in its sole discretion, to monitor the Services, LinkOMed nonetheless assumes no responsibility for the Content, no obligation to modify or remove any inappropriate Content, and no responsibility for the conduct of the User submitting any such Content.

Content that requires consent

Any and all Content that is uploaded by a User and that contains a photograph or a movie of a patient, including images of surgery and from scopes will require patient consent to be used in LinkOMed. The User is responsible for ensuring that all necessary permissions and authorisations have been obtained for the use of these photograph and movies. For such images consent may be obtained in writing by the User or using the LinkOMed app.

There is an option to obtain consent later for images. However, you will not be able publish the case until consent is obtained. We will also delete the image from the case should you not obtain consent within a reasonable time period, currently set at 24hrs.

Content that does not require consent

Consent is not normally required for x-rays, radiology scans, blood results, ECGS and the like if the images are anonymous and with no identifiable patient data. The User must remove all personal and patient identifiers that specifically identify any patient in Content uploaded or descriptions added to Content.

In case discussion, learning modules and other LinkOMed features it is the responsibility of the User to provide sufficient clinical information for assessment and discussion without compromising patient confidentiality. In any situation where the User is uncertain regarding patient confidentiality he must exercise caution.

The User is responsible for any local requirements for reproduction or display of personal images, video or other material, and the User must comply with all local regulations.

Users are solely responsible for the Content posted on or through any of the Services, and any material or information that you transmit to other Members and for your interactions with other Users. LinkOMed does not endorse and has no control over the Content. Content is not necessarily reviewed by LinkOMed prior to posting and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of LinkOMed. Furthermore, we make no warranties, express or implied, as to the Content or to the accuracy and reliability of the Content or any material or information that Users transmit to other User.

PROHIBITED CONTENT AND ACTIVITY

The following is a partial list of the kind of Content that is illegal or prohibited to upload and/or post on or through our Services. We reserve the right to investigate and take appropriate legal action against anyone who, in LinkOMed's sole discretion, violates this provision, including without limitation, removing the offending communication and content from the Services and terminating the Membership of such violators. Prohibited Content includes, but is not limited to:

• material that is offensive and promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual;
• using any information obtained from the Services in order to harass, abuse, or harm another person; or using the Services in a manner inconsistent with any and all applicable laws and regulations;
• contains personal data or information that directly identifies any patient;
• exploits people in a sexual or violent manner;
• contains nudity, violence, or offensive subject matter;
• provides any telephone numbers, street addresses, last names, URLs or email addresses where such information is not permitted to be shared by LinkOMed;
• promotes information that is known to be false or misleading or promotes illegal activities or conduct that is abusive, threatening, obscene, defamatory or libelous;
• promotes an illegal or unauthorised copy of another person's copyrighted work, such as providing pirated computer programs or links to them, providing information to circumvent manufacture-installed copy-protect devices, or providing pirated music or links to pirated music files;
• involves the transmission of "junk mail," "chain letters," or unsolicited mass mailing, instant messaging, "spimming," or "spamming";
• contains restricted or password only access pages or hidden pages or images (those not linked to or from another accessible page);
• furthers or promotes any criminal activity or enterprise or provides instructional information about illegal activities including, but not limited to making or buying illegal weapons, violating someone's privacy, or providing or creating computer viruses;
• solicits passwords or personal identifying information for commercial or unlawful purposes from other Users;
• involves commercial activities and/or sales without our prior written consent such as contests, sweepstakes, barter, advertising, or pyramid schemes;
• includes a photograph of another person that you have posted without that person's consent;
• advertising to, or solicitation of, any Member to buy or sell any products or services through the Services, excluding those services that are included with the specific prior written consent of LinkOMed and subject to the conditions of use stipulated by LinkOMed. Users may not transmit any chain letters or junk email to other Members. It is also a violation of these rules to use any information obtained from the Services in order to contact, advertise to, solicit, or sell to any Member without their prior explicit consent. In order to protect Members from such advertising or solicitation, LinkOMed reserves the right to restrict the number of emails or messages which a Member may send to other Members in any 24-hour period to a number which LinkOMed deems appropriate in its sole discretion. If Users breach this Terms and send unsolicited bulk email, instant messages or other unsolicited communications of any kind through the Services, Users acknowledge that they will have caused substantial harm to LinkOMed, but that the amount of such harm would be extremely difficult to ascertain. As a reasonable estimation of such harm, such Users agree to pay LinkOMed £100 for each such unsolicited email or other unsolicited communication you send through the Services;
• covering or obscuring the banner advertisements on your personal profile page, or within any of Services via HTML/CSS or any other means;
• any automated use of the system, such as using scripts to add friends or to crawl the site to copy files or images;
• interfering with, disrupting, or creating an undue burden on the Services or the networks or services connected to the Services;
• attempting to impersonate another Member or person;
• using the account, username, or password of another Member at any time or disclosing your password to any third party or permitting any third party to access your account; or
• selling or otherwise transferring a profile.

WE MAY MAKE CHANGES TO OUR ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

We amend these policy terms from time to time. Every time you wish to use our app and website, please check these terms to ensure you understand the terms that apply at that time. These terms were most recently updated on 24th May 2018 when we re-structured our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy to make them clearer and more transparent.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

• “app” means the LinkOMed iOS and Android Apps located within the App Store and Google Play store respectively.
• “Content” or “content” means content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials.
• “Individual Membership” means personal LinkOMed membership for doctors, medical students and registered healthcare professionals.
• “Institutional Membership” means membership of LinkOMed for hospitals, clinics, societies, companies and other organisations authorized by LinkOMed.
• “Member” or “LinkOMed Member” means a registered user of Services.
• “LinkOMed Content” means content that is contained within the Services as protected by copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret and other laws and which is owned by, LinkOMed Limited.
• "MM" means the LinkOMed Messaging tool as owned or licensed by LinkOMed.
• LinkOMed “services” include our app (“app”) the LinkOMed.net website ("our website"), LinkOMed Messaging ("MM"), and any other features, content, or applications offered from time to time by us and our partners
• "use" means use, run, copy, publicly perform or display, distribute, modify, translate, and create derivative works of.
• “Restricted Membership” means membership for individuals and organisations that are not eligible for Individual or Institutional Membership with prior written consent.
• “User” or “user” means a Visitor, who may or may not be LinkOMed Member.
• “Visitor” means a visiting user of the Services who is not registered as a LinkOMed Member.
• "website" means the website, located at www.LinkOMed.net, operated by LinkOMed Ltd.

Please contact us by email at  support@linkomed.com with any questions regarding LinkOMed’s Acceptable Use Policy.