Privacy policy
This is a plain-language summary of how personal data is handled on the platform. It is written to the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and its Rules. It is a product document pending counsel review, not a legal instrument.
What we collect, and why
| Who | Data | Purpose | Kept for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doctors | Name, registration, qualifications, practice details, contact for OTP, identity evidence | Verifying and publishing a professional profile | While the profile exists, then 3 years for audit |
| Reviewers | Name, mobile and email, review content, private proof of consultation (optional) | Publishing first-hand reviews and validating evidence | Proof deleted once the review is decided (at most 30 days after upload); review while published |
| Visitors | Pages viewed, contact actions taken | Improving discovery and measuring whether people reach a doctor | Aggregated after 13 months |
| Visitors who search | The words of a search, and the reading of it described under Search, voice and AI | Showing the right doctors, and the emergency notice where it applies | Not linked to you; a search’s AI reading is reused for up to 30 days |
What we do not collect
We do not collect diagnoses, prescriptions, reports or treatment records. Reviewers are warned not to include them and moderators redact them. Identity documents and proof of visit are private evidence and never appear on a public page.
Search, voice and AI
- What you search for never goes into a web address. The results page is addressed by a sealed code that only our server can read, so analytics and advertising tags, browser history sync and server logs see the code, not your words.
- Emergency check. Every search is checked on our own server for words that suggest an emergency or a crisis, so we can show emergency numbers first. No AI is involved in this check.
- AI reading. A search written as a sentence, or in an Indian language, is sent to Anthropic, our AI provider, to work out which kind of doctor and which place you mean. Before it is sent we remove phone numbers, email addresses and long ID or hospital numbers. Your name, account, IP address and location are not sent. The reading is stored against the words of the search, not against you, and reused for up to 30 days so the same search is not sent twice.
- Voice search. Speech is turned into text by your browser’s own speech service (Google for Chrome, Apple for Safari); the audio does not reach us. We receive only the text, which is then handled like a typed search.
- Your city. We suggest a city from the approximate location of your internet connection. We do not store it. The place you last searched with is remembered only in your browser. Use my location asks your permission each time and is rounded to about 1 km.
- Doctors. The profile drafting assistant sends the professional details already on the doctor’s profile to Anthropic to draft an introduction. Nothing is published until the doctor edits and saves it.
AI readings are automatic and can be wrong. They choose which listing to show you; they are not a diagnosis or medical advice.
Cookies and analytics
The site sets cookies of its own only where it needs them to work: tdi_consent, which remembers whether you allowed analytics, for 180 days; a session cookie, only if you sign in; andtdi_d, a random browser id set when you submit a review and kept for a year, used solely to notice several reviews of one doctor coming from one browser in a day. It identifies the browser, not you; only a hash of it is stored, and it is never used for analytics or advertising.
With your permission, we use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages help people reach a doctor. It sets the _ga cookies and sends Google the page address, the page that referred you and the page title. It is not sent which doctor you enquired about, what you searched for or anything you type into a form. Advertising features are switched off. The same choice covers a Google Ads tag that measures whether our advertising leads doctors to sign up; it receives the page address, and ad personalisation (remarketing) is switched off.
Until you choose Allow, neither the analytics script nor the Google Ads tag is loaded at all. You can change your answer at any time from Cookie settings at the foot of every page; declining removes the analytics cookies from your browser.
Your rights
- Access, correct, complete and update your data.
- Withdraw consent as easily as you gave it.
- Ask for erasure, subject to the retention schedule above.
- Nominate someone to exercise these rights for you.
- Raise a grievance with the named officer, and escalate to the Data Protection Board.
Contact
Grievance officer: grievance@thedoctorindex.in. Acknowledged within 24 hours. See the grievance process.
Other policies
- Verification methodology — What each verification label on a doctor profile means, which source it was checked against, and how often it is re-checked.
- Ranking and sorting — The published weights behind organic result order, and our commitment that payment is never an input to it.
- Review policy — What patients may write, what doctors may reply, what we refuse to sell, and our internal moderation targets.
- Corrections, appeals and takedowns — How to challenge anything on a public page, how removal and merges are handled, and what provenance we keep.
- Editorial and medical review policy — Who writes and reviews health content on this site, how sources are handled, and what we will not publish.
- Advertising and sponsorship policy — What can and cannot be paid for on this platform, and how anything sponsored is separated and labelled.
- Terms of use — The rules for using the directory, for doctors listing on it, and for anyone posting a review.
- Grievance process — How to raise a complaint about a profile, a review, your data or the platform, who handles it, and the timelines that apply.