Privacy notice

Information held

• Account information: name, email address, username, job title, telephone number where supplied, preferred language, time zone, account status and assigned roles.
• Profile photographs, where a user chooses to upload one.
• Procurement records: budgets, purchase requests, tenders, catalogue items, vendors, evaluations, awards and purchase orders.
• Uploaded documents, including supplied PDFs and spreadsheets, and text extracted from them.
• Audit records of significant actions, including who acted and when.
• Shared access records: what was shared, with which restrictions, and how the link was used. Access codes themselves are stored only as hashes.
• Assistant conversations, where the Mermaid assistant is used, together with usage counts.

Why it is held

Information is held to operate the procurement process, to control who may see or change each record, to keep an accountable history of decisions, and to support the organisation that owns the data. It is not sold, and it is not used for advertising.

Profile photographs

Profile photographs are stored privately and are shown only inside the authenticated workspace. They are not published publicly and are not included in shared links by default. A user may replace or remove their own photograph at any time; initials are shown when no photograph is held.

Artificial intelligence processing

• The Mermaid assistant sends the text of a question, and relevant catalogue or source material, to a server-side AI provider. Provider credentials are held on the server and are never exposed to the browser.
• The assistant provides research and decision-support commentary only. It does not diagnose, prescribe, approve, award or purchase, and any dose calculation is marked as requiring veterinarian confirmation.
• Conversations are stored against the user who created them, may be reviewed by that user, and may be deleted by that user.
• Assistant content is not used to train external models by the application.
• Voice input and spoken responses use the browser's own speech facilities and begin only after the user requests them. Microphone permission is requested by the browser, never assumed.
• Links to external regulatory sources — including the United States FDA, the European Medicines Agency, the United Kingdom Veterinary Medicines Directorate and the Australian APVMA — open those organisations' own websites, which operate under their own privacy terms.

Cookies and local storage

The application stores a session token, the chosen language and interface preferences in the browser. These are required for the application to function; no advertising or third-party tracking cookies are used. Signing out clears sensitive stored state.

Retention

Procurement records and audit history are retained for as long as the owning organisation requires them, and the audit retention period is configurable by an Administrator. Assistant conversations are retained until the user deletes them or an Administrator applies a shorter retention setting. Shared access records are retained after a link expires so that use of the link remains auditable.

Correction and removal

A user may correct their own profile details in the application. Requests to correct or remove other information should be sent to veerensamy@gmail.com. Some records, in particular audit history, are retained for accountability and may not be removable.

Contact

Privacy questions may be sent to veerensamy@gmail.com. The application is developed by vSam AI Technologies and built by Dr. Veeren Samy.