A letter from our CEO
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My name is Lucia Huang, co-founder and CEO at Osmind. I'm dedicated to improving healthcare and helping people get access to life-changing treatments. Most recently, I worked at a neuroscience company to help create new treatments for brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. I am now focused on another area of brain science that is near and dear to me — I want to improve mental health for those who need it most.
At Osmind, our goal is to maximize patient access to innovative treatments that can help where other therapies fail. These innovative approaches include psychedelic medicines, which have tremendous potential to change mental health. We strive to help these transformative therapies gain FDA approval and widespread use more effectively and quickly to help the many people who are struggling each and every day. Our platform empowers providers, improves patient care, and accelerates research in this field. We are guided by our north star — to help people of all backgrounds feel better.
As part of our work, we are entrusted with confidential information from medical providers and patients whom we serve. We uphold strict standards for safeguarding protected health information that meet or exceed all applicable legal requirements, including those outlined on the United States Department of Human and Health Services' Health Information Privacy Page. Our platform is HIPAA compliant and protected by end-to-end encryption. We work with independent third parties to verify our compliance and security. Many of our team members use mental health services, so we know firsthand how important privacy and security are; we protect your data as if it were our own.
Patients - you will always own your health data and you have the right to all of it.
At Osmind, we are patients just like you. We are committed to improving lives by learning from the experience of people who have gone through their own mental health journeys. In pursuit of this mission, we work with mental health clinics, academic centers, and research organizations all over the world to generate insights that enable our clinics to provide the best possible care and researchers to develop new and better mental health treatments.
When any of us receive treatment by any healthcare provider (whether that's our primary care physician, surgeon, or mental health provider), we are permitting the medical practice to use information about us in ways that are allowed by federal and state privacy laws including HIPAA. These laws permit the use of de-identified information to improve patient care and develop new treatments. For many mental health clinics around the country, Osmind provides software that enhances care and improves the patient experience. If you are treated at one of these clinics, Osmind may access your information to help the clinic with your care and use it in a de-identified and aggregated form for research towards new transformative treatments. In these cases, information is aggregated and fully de-identified. This means any data used is completely devoid of personally-identifiable information and cannot be traced back to any individual (in fact, strict requirements expressly prohibit any attempts by research entities to re-identify any patient data). The data are aggregated, meaning de-identified records are combined with numerous other records for population-level anonymous comparisons. This aggregated information helps researchers understand more about mental health, such as why certain people benefit more than others for a particular treatment, helping to establish clinical best practices.
Our process for anonymizing data is rigorous and sophisticated. We do more than just redact records by erasing names and all demographic information. We actually remove specific pieces of information from all records, such as medications, lab results, diagnoses, etc. and put those into separate files that contain similar information from numerous other records. Thus the only thing researchers see are spreadsheets with a bunch of numbers, medications, and dates that include information from, at minimum, thousands of anonymous contributors around the world who have joined forces to advance science and healing. As a result, the information is totally anonymous. Some people have concerns that data in general can never be totally anonymized, but a combination of our rigorous de-identification process, aggregation across (at minimum) thousands of people across the world, and strict laws forbidding any attempt by researchers to re-identify data make it extraordinarily difficult if not virtually impossible to trace data back to any individual or clinic.
We want to emphasize: we will never use your information — even in de-identified forms — for marketing purposes. Any de-identified data is used solely for research to create new mental health treatments and cannot be traced back to you. The more we know as a medical community, the more opportunity we have for discoveries that can promote mental health for you, your loved ones, and people around the world. Please email us if you would not like to contribute your anonymized information to transform mental health and neuroscience.
Thank you so much for coming on this journey with us and we can't wait to work together to fix our broken mental healthcare system. We're in this together.
Sincerely,
Lucia
Privacy Policy
Effective date: April 21, 2020
We at Osmind Inc. (“Osmind”) know you care about how your personal information is used and shared, and we take your privacy seriously. Please read the following to learn more about our Privacy Policy. By using or accessing our website or other services (“Services”) in any manner, you acknowledge that you accept the practices and policies outlined in this Privacy Policy, and you hereby consent that we will collect, use, and share your information in the following ways.
Remember that your use of Osmind’s Services is at all times subject to our Terms of Service, which incorporates this Privacy Policy. Any terms we use in this Policy without defining them have the definitions given to them in the Terms of Service.
What does this Privacy Policy cover?
This Privacy Policy covers our treatment of personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”) that we gather when you are accessing or using our Services, but not to the practices of companies we don’t own or control, or people that we don’t manage. We gather various types of Personal Information from our users, as explained in more detail below, and we use this Personal Information internally in connection with our Services, including to personalize, provide, and improve our services, to contact you and allow other users to contact you, to fulfill your requests for certain products and services, and to analyze how you use the Services. In certain cases, we may also share some Personal Information with third parties, but only as described below. This Privacy Policy does not apply to protected health information we collect on behalf of health care providers subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. That information is subject to our agreements with those health care providers and their Notices of Privacy Practices.
We do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13. If you are under 13, please do not attempt to register for the Services or send any personal information about yourself to us. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a child under 13 may have provided us personal information, please contact us at hello@osmind.org.
Will Osmind ever change this Privacy Policy?
We’re constantly trying to improve our Services, so we may need to change this Privacy Policy from time to time as well, but we will alert you to changes by placing a notice on www.osmind.org, by sending you an email, and/or by some other means. Please note that if you’ve opted not to receive legal notice emails from us (or you haven’t provided us with your email address), those legal notices will still govern your use of the Services, and you are still responsible for reading and understanding them. If you use the Services after any changes to the Privacy Policy have been posted, that means you agree to all of the changes. Use of information we collect now is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is collected.
What Information does Osmind collect?
We receive and store any information you knowingly provide to us. For example, if you submit a form through the “Contact” page, we will collect Personal Information such as your name, organization name, phone number and email address. Certain information may be required to register with us or to take advantage of some of our features.We may communicate with you if you’ve provided us the means to do so. For example, if you’ve given us your email address, we may send you promotional email offers on behalf of Osmind or other businesses, or email you about your use of the Services. Also, we may receive a confirmation when you open an email from us. This confirmation helps us make our communications with you more interesting and improve our services. If you do not want to receive communications from us, please indicate your preference by sending an email to hello@osmind.org.
Will Osmind share any of the Personal Information it receives?
We may choose to buy or sell assets, and may share and/or transfer account, contact, and other Personal Information in connection with the evaluation of and entry into such transactions. Also, if we (or our assets) are acquired, or if we go out of business, enter bankruptcy, or go through some other change of control, Personal Information could be one of the assets transferred to or acquired by a third party.
We may de-identify your Personal Information so that you are not identified as an individual, and provide that information to our partners. We may also provide aggregate usage information to our partners (or allow partners to collect that information from you), who may use such information to understand how often and in what ways people use our Services, so that they, too, can provide you with an optimal online experience.
In some circumstances, we employ other companies and people to perform tasks on our behalf and need to share your information with them to provide products or services to you; for example, we may use a third-party mail management service to send you emails on our behalf. Unless we tell you differently, our agents do not have any right to use the Personal Information we share with them beyond what is necessary to assist us.
We reserve the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any information that we reasonably believe is necessary to comply with law or court order; enforce or apply this Privacy Policy and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of Osmind, our employees, our users, or others.
Is Personal Information about me secure?
We endeavor to protect the privacy of your Personal Information we hold in our records. While we take strict measures to protect information, we cannot guarantee complete security, such as from unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors that may compromise the security of user information.
Does Osmind offer medical advice?
As stated in our Terms of Service, Osmind does not offer medical advice or diagnoses, or engage in the practice of medicine. Our Services are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and are offered for informational and communicative purposes only. The Services are not intended to be, and must not be taken to be, the practice of medicine, nursing, pharmacy or other healthcare advice by Osmind.
The Services are not meant to diagnose or treat any conditions – only your medical professional can determine the right course of treatment for you and determine what is safe, appropriate and effective based on your needs. Reliance on any information provided by Osmind or in connection with the Services is solely at your own risk. You are solely responsible for any decisions or actions you take based on the information and materials available through the Services.
You acknowledge that although some content may be provided by individuals in the medical profession, the provision of such content does not create a medical professional/patient relationship between you and Osmind or between you and any other individual or entity, and does not constitute an opinion, medical advice, or diagnosis or treatment. Healthcare providers and patients should always obtain applicable diagnostic information from appropriate trusted sources. Healthcare providers should never withhold professional medical advice or delay in providing it because of something they have read in connection with our Services.
THE SERVICES SHOULD NEVER BE USED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR EMERGENCY CARE. IF YOU HAVE A MEDICAL OR MENTAL HEALTH EMERGENCY, ARE THINKING ABOUT SUICIDE OR TAKING ACTIONS THAT MAY CAUSE HARM TO YOU OR TO OTHERS, YOU SHOULD SEEK EMERGENCY TREATMENT AT THE NEAREST EMERGENCY ROOM OR DIAL 911.
State Law Privacy Rights
California Resident Rights
Under California Civil Code Sections 1798.83-1798.84, California residents are entitled to contact us to prevent disclosure of Personal Information to third parties for such third parties’ direct marketing purposes; in order to submit such a request, please contact us at hello@osmind.org.
Your browser may offer you a “Do Not Track” option, which allows you to signal to operators of websites and web applications and services that you do not wish such operators to track certain of your online activities over time and across different websites. Our Services do not support DO Not Track requests at this time. To find out more about “Do Not Track,” you can visit www.allaboutdnt.com.
Nevada Resident Rights
If you are a resident of Nevada, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of certain Personal Information to third parties who intend to license or sell that Personal Information. You can exercise this right by contacting us at hello@osmind.org with the subject line “Nevada Do Not Sell Request” and providing us with your name and the email address associated with your account. Please note that we do not currently sell your Personal Information as sales are defined in Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 603A.
What choices do I have?
You can always opt not to disclose information to us, but keep in mind some information may be needed to register with us or to take advantage of some of our features.
You may be able to add, update, or delete information as explained above. When you update information, however, we may maintain a copy of the unrevised information in our records. Some information may remain in our records even if you request deletion of such information from your account. We may use aggregated data derived from or incorporating your Personal Information after you update or delete it, but not in a manner that would identify you personally.
Contact Information
If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, the ways in which we collect and use your Personal Information, your choices and rights regarding such use, please do not hesitate to contact us at: www.osmind.org or hello@osmind.org.
