Privacy Policy

Yana (“Yana”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is the agency responsible for the personal information described in this policy under the Privacy Act 2020.

Because much of what Yana holds is information about your health, we also handle it in line with the Health Information Privacy Code 2020, which applies the Act’s principles to health information with some stronger protections.

Yana is built to work offline. Your medications, dose history, check-ins, vitals and profile are kept on your device first, which is what lets the app keep working with no connection. Anything you enter while offline is queued and synced to your account as soon as you are back online.

Using the tracking features requires a free account — that is what lets your information reach your own space in our database, so you can reach it from another device and it is not lost with your phone. Our public pages — the home page, the medicine guides and the health articles — can be read without an account.

• Account details — your email address, and your first and last name.
• Health information you enter — your medications and schedules, dose logs (including doses you log as taken, missed or taken retrospectively), as-needed (PRN) dose history, vitals readings, daily check-ins including mood, sleep, weight and any journal note you write, and your streak and progress.
• Care Circle details — if you invite someone to your Care Circle, the name, role and any phone number you enter for them, and the permissions you set. That is personal information about another person, entered by you — only invite people who have agreed to it.
• Your saved health places — the pharmacy, GP or other services you choose to save to your care team.
• Reminder delivery details — if you turn on reminders, the notification address for that device, your reminder preferences and your language, so a reminder can actually be delivered.
• Diagnostic crash reports — see “Diagnostic crash reports” below.

Some things are deliberately excluded from syncing and stay only on the device you set them on:

• Your light or dark theme preference
• Your preferred display language
• Any custom photo you add to a medication
• Any profile photo you add

Medication and profile photos are never uploaded, even when you are signed in and syncing.

Other Yana users cannot see your information. Every record is bound to your account at the database level, so one account cannot read another’s through the app — this is enforced by the database itself, not just by what the app chooses to display. People who operate, maintain or support Yana may access information where needed to run the service, investigate a problem, or meet a legal obligation.

Your Care Circle. If you invite someone as a Watcher, they see whether doses were taken or not taken and when — and nothing else. They cannot see the name, dose or purpose of any medicine, and they cannot see your as-needed (PRN) history at all. This is a structural limit, not a display choice: the only way a Watcher can read your dose activity returns timing columns and does not contain medicine identity. You can remove a Watcher at any time.

Your pharmacy. If you link to a pharmacy that uses Yana, its staff can see your dose timing in the same anonymised way. Your medicine names and doses reach that pharmacy only if you separately turn medication sharing on for it, and you can turn it off again.

We use the information described above to:

• Run the app — record your doses, show your history and progress, and sync between your devices
• Send the reminders, nudges and check-ins you have asked for
• Show the sharing you have set up to the people and pharmacies you chose
• Keep the service secure, diagnose faults, and prevent misuse
• Understand how Yana is used in aggregate, so we can improve it
• Meet our legal obligations

How we use information may change and grow over time as Yana does. Yana is currently free, and we may introduce paid features, partnerships with healthcare or research organisations, commercial products built on what we learn from the service, or other ways of funding it. Where we do, we may create and use aggregated and de-identified information — statistics and patterns from which no individual can reasonably be identified — including sharing or licensing it to third parties. Once information is genuinely de-identified it is no longer personal information under the Privacy Act 2020.

For anything that would still identify you, we will handle it on a lawful basis under the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020 — which for a new purpose of this kind generally means asking for your authorisation first. We will update this policy before a materially new use begins, and significant changes will be surfaced in the app rather than only posted here.

Information about your health carries stronger protection under the Health Information Privacy Code 2020. By entering health information into Yana you authorise us to collect and use it for the purposes set out in this policy — tracking your doses, showing your history, sending the reminders you asked for, syncing to your other devices, and the sharing you set up yourself.

You can withdraw that authorisation at any time by turning off sharing or deleting your account, which erases the information we hold.

We keep the information in your account for as long as your account is open. If you delete your account, the information attached to it is deleted — see “Your rights” below.

Diagnostic crash reports are automatically deleted after 90 days. Care Circle invite codes expire 10 minutes after they are created. Aggregated and de-identified information may be kept indefinitely, because it no longer identifies anyone.

All traffic to and from Yana is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS), and stored data is encrypted at rest by our database provider. Your records are isolated at the database level so only your account — and the people you have explicitly shared with — can read them.

No system is completely secure and we cannot guarantee it, but we take reasonable steps to protect your information as required by IPP 5 of the Privacy Act 2020. If a privacy breach happens that is likely to cause serious harm, we are required to notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the people affected, and we will.

When the app hits an error it sends a diagnostic report so we can fix it. These reports are deliberately limited:

• They describe the error and where in the app it happened — not the contents of your medications, doses, vitals or check-ins.
• Before a report is stored or sent, email addresses, phone numbers, access tokens and long digit strings are automatically stripped out of the text, and page addresses are reduced so they cannot identify a specific record.
• If you choose to write a description of what went wrong, we receive what you write and the email address you give.
• Reports are kept for 90 days and then automatically deleted.

Crash reports are handled by a third-party error-monitoring provider whose servers are in the European Union, so a report leaves New Zealand — see “Where your information goes” below. That provider records the approximate country and city a report was sent from, based on the internet connection it arrived on. We do not send it your name or your account identifier.

By using Yana you agree to our use of cookies, local storage and similar technologies, including measurement and analytics technology we may add over time to support the website, the app, or both.

Yana does not currently run a third-party advertising network and does not show third-party ads. If that changes, we will update this policy and the Cookies page before it does.

Full detail on what is stored on your device is in our Cookies & Storage page.

We use a small number of service providers to run Yana. They process information on our instructions for the purposes described in this policy, and they remain our responsibility under the Privacy Act 2020:

• A database and authentication provider — stores your account and health information, and handles signing in.
• A hosting provider — serves the website and the app.
• Notification providers — deliver the reminders and check-ins you asked for to your device.
• An error-monitoring provider — receives the diagnostic crash reports described above.
• Third-party sign-in providers — only if you choose to sign in with one instead of an email and password.

Your account and health information is stored in Australia (Sydney). Some of the providers above process information elsewhere — in particular, diagnostic crash reports are processed in the European Union, and hosting and notification providers may process information in other countries.

IPP 12 of the Privacy Act 2020 restricts sending personal information outside New Zealand. Where we do, we rely on the protections it allows — including requiring the provider by contract to protect your information to a standard comparable to New Zealand’s, or your authorisation. If you want detail on where a specific provider processes your information, contact us.

Under the Privacy Act 2020 you have the right to:

• Ask what personal information we hold about you, and get access to it (IPP 6)
• Ask us to correct information that is wrong, or attach a statement of correction if we do not (IPP 7)
• Ask us to delete your information
• Complain to us, and to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner

You can delete everything yourself from your profile settings. Deleting your account permanently removes your account and the data attached to it — medications, dose history, as-needed history, vitals, check-ins, Care Circle links, saved places, progress and reminder registrations. It cannot be undone. Some records may be retained where the law requires it, and aggregated de-identified information already created is not reversed, because it no longer identifies you.

You can also generate a health summary PDF of your medication, adherence, vitals and wellbeing history at any time, to keep or to show a health professional.

If you are not happy with how we have handled your information, contact us first — we would rather fix it. You can also complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz or on 0800 803 909, at no cost to you.

Yana does not restrict use by age. If the person using Yana is under 16, a parent or legal guardian should read and agree to this policy on their behalf and help supervise the account and the health information in it. If you believe a child is using Yana without appropriate involvement from a parent or guardian, contact us and we will help, including deleting the account if you ask.

If we change how we handle your information, we will update this page and change the date above. Significant changes will be surfaced in the app, not only posted here.

For anything in this policy, including a request about your information, email hello@yana.co.nz. We will respond within 20 working days, as the Privacy Act requires.