Privacy Policy

Ovasi is a personal health companion. Your health information is among the most sensitive information there is, and this policy explains — in plain language — what we collect, why, where it lives, who processes it, and the rights you have over it under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).

1. Who we are

Ovasi is operated by Mthabela Ventures (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2026/590746/07), trading as Ovasi, a private company incorporated in South Africa. Mthabela Ventures (Pty) Ltd is the responsible party for your personal information under POPIA.

Our Information Officer is Banele Mthabela. For any privacy question, or to exercise any right in this policy, contact privacy@ovasi.app. Our PAIA manual is available on request from the same address.

2. What we collect, and whether it is required

POPIA requires us to tell you what we collect, and whether providing it is voluntary or mandatory. Almost everything in Ovasi is voluntary — the only information you must provide is the contact detail you sign in with.

Health information is special personal information under POPIA. We process it only with your explicit consent, collected in the app before the relevant feature runs, and only for the purposes below.

3. Why we process it

We process your information for one purpose: to provide Ovasi to you — your tracking, calendars, predictions, reminders, insights, reports and the specific features you invoke. Our lawful basis is your consent and the performance of our agreement with you. We do not use your information for advertising or marketing profiles, we do not sell or rent it to anyone, and we do not use your health information to train AI models.

4. The AI features

Some features — insights, the companion chat, photo readings, doctor-ready reports — use artificial intelligence. Here is exactly how that works:

• Your explicit permission comes first. AI features are off until you consent in-app, and you can withdraw that consent at any time in Settings.
• Who processes it: the relevant excerpts of your data are processed by our AI provider, Anthropic, on servers hosted in the United States, under a binding data-processing agreement.
• Zero retention for sensitive content: health-related requests are routed under a zero-data-retention arrangement — the provider does not store your content after responding and does not use it to train models.
• We keep metadata only about each AI call (which feature, which model, token counts, timing) — never the content of your prompts or the responses.
• AI output is informational. It narrates and connects your own data. It never diagnoses, prescribes or scores you, and Ovasi makes no decision about you by solely automated means that has a legal or similarly significant effect.

5. Where your data lives

Your account, health record, photos, recordings and documents are stored in South Africa, in the AWS Cape Town region (af-south-1), encrypted at rest and in transit. Encrypted backups are kept on a 7-day rolling window and then expire automatically.

6. Processing that crosses the border

A small, defined set of processing happens outside South Africa. POPIA requires us to name it, and to tell you that the laws of these countries may not offer the same statutory protection as POPIA — which is why each transfer below is covered by a binding data-processing agreement imposing comparable safeguards and restricting onward transfers, and happens only for the purpose shown:

7. Sharing

We do not sell your personal information — to anyone, ever — and we do not share your health record for advertising, marketing or data mining. The only sharing that happens is:

• Processors working for us (section 6, plus our cloud host AWS in South Africa and our subscription processor RevenueCat, which sees your subscription status — never your health data), each bound by contract to process only on our instructions;
• Sharing you initiate — exporting a report and handing it to your doctor, or sharing chosen parts of your record with someone you trust (section 8);
• Anonymised fee contributions, only if you opt in: specialty, locality and amount — never a receipt, never your identity;
• Legal compulsion — see below.

Requests from authorities

If a government or law-enforcement request for user data arrives, we will disclose only the minimum that a valid South African legal process compels us to disclose, we will challenge requests that are overbroad, and we will tell the affected person unless the law forbids it. We built Ovasi so that reproductive-health information is treated with particular care; we will never volunteer it. As of the effective date of this policy, we have never received a request for user data from any government or law-enforcement body.

8. Sharing with someone you trust

You can invite a specific person — a partner, a carer, an emergency contact — to see chosen parts of your record inside Ovasi. This is built so that you stay in control at every step:

• It only happens if you start it. You invite a specific person, and nothing is shared until they accept and you approve the individual who used your invite. We never start sharing for you, and never suggest people to share with.
• You pick exactly which categories they see, and you can change or narrow that selection at any time — changes take effect immediately and are recorded in your sharing history.
• They can only read what you picked. They can never change your record, add to it, export it, or act as you.
• Reproductive information has an extra lock. Your cycle and reproductive information is never included unless you deliberately add it and confirm that choice separately — and your intimacy information can never be shared this way at all.
• You can see their access. The app shows you what areas the person has viewed, so sharing is never a black box.
• Alerts are your choice. The person receives only the alerts you deliberately configure for them, if any.
• You can stop it at any time — instantly and silently. Revoking takes effect immediately, and we never tell the other person when you stop. We record your revocation as a withdrawal of consent under POPIA.

The person you invite needs their own Ovasi account (18 or older). To send an invite we process the contact detail you provide for them, and once they hold an account, this policy protects what we process about them too.

9. Apple Health and Health Connect

With your permission, Ovasi reads the device health data listed in section 2. It never writes to Apple Health or Health Connect, and data obtained from them is used only to show and analyse your own record — never for advertising, and never disclosed to third parties for marketing or data mining.

10. Recordings

You may record your own consultations; South African law (RICA) permits recording a conversation you are party to. We suggest, though the law does not require, telling your practitioner. Recordings live in your record, in South Africa, and sharing one is always an explicit action you take.

11. How long we keep things

• Your record: for as long as your account is active.
• Account deletion: deleting your account in-app erases your record — database entries and stored media — immediately, and the last traces clear from our encrypted backups within about 7 days. Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone.
• Abandoned accounts: we don't keep health records that are no longer wanted. If your account is completely inactive for 24 months, we will warn you at your sign-in address, and if you don't return within 3 months of the warning, we will delete your record as if you had asked us to.
• AI content: not retained by the provider (section 4); our audit metadata contains no content.
• Transcription audio: processed transiently; the transcript lives in your record.

12. Security

We protect your information with TLS for everything in transit, encryption at rest, per-account isolation and access controls, short-lived signed URLs for media, rate limiting, and secret redaction in logs. Health data lives in one region (Cape Town) with region drift monitored. If a breach ever puts your personal information at risk, we will notify the Information Regulator and affected users as soon as reasonably possible, as POPIA requires. If you believe you have found a security issue in Ovasi, please tell us at security@ovasi.app — we welcome responsible disclosure.

13. Your rights

Under POPIA you can, at any time — and we will action any request below within 30 days, usually much sooner:

• Access your information — everything is visible in the app, and you can export a complete copy from Settings;
• Correct anything — every entry in Ovasi can be viewed, edited and deleted;
• Delete your entire account and record, permanently, from Settings;
• Object to processing, or withdraw any consent (including for AI features) without affecting the rest of the app;
• Complain — first to us at privacy@ovasi.app, and if we don't resolve it, to the Information Regulator (South Africa): Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191 · enquiries@inforegulator.org.za · 010 023 5200 (toll-free 0800 017 160) · inforegulator.org.za/complaints.

14. Children

Ovasi is for adults. You must be 18 or older to create an account. We do not knowingly process children's information; if we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will delete it.

15. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in any material way, we will tell you in the app before the change takes effect, and the date at the top will always show the current version. Previous versions are available on request from privacy@ovasi.app.