Privacy Policy

Last updated December 11th, 2024

1. Introduction

Blooming Health, Inc. a Delaware corporation (“us”, “we”, “BH” or “our”) is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected and that your data stays safe. This page informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data when you use our Services and our website at gobloominghealth.com (“Website”) including related subdomains; our mobile, tablet and other smart device applications, when applicable; or other BH tools, technology and programs and all associated services (collectively, the “BH Services”). This Privacy Policy is a legally binding agreement between you (“User”, “you” or “your”) and BH. By accessing and using the BH Services, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by the terms of this Agreement. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of companies that we do not own or control.  

We use your data to provide and improve the BH Services. By using the BH Services, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this Privacy Policy now and as amended by us. Unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy, terms used in this Privacy Policy have the same meanings as in our Terms of Service.

2. COLLECTION AND USE OF PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

“Personally Identifiable Information” is data that can be used to uniquely identify you, like your full name or home address. During your use of BH Services you may be asked to provide Personally Identifiable Information, including but not limited to names, ages, phone numbers, email addresses, contact preferences, contact or authentication data, program interests, gender, preferred language, check-in information such as social activity, social related needs, loneliness measures, food security, and other similar information. We need these pieces of information in order to deliver our service to you.

Any information which qualifies as Protected Health Information requirements, as defined by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and its implementing regulations (“HIPAA”), that is collected and stored as part of the Blooming Services by us, is done so in full compliance with HIPAA on HIPAA-compliant servers.

BH uses the information it collects about you to, among other things, operate and improve the Services, contact and respond to you, fulfill your requests and as detailed more fully below. We may also use automated processes to help us determine how best to prioritize and/or address your needs. While we collect Personally Identifiable Information, we will not share it with any third parties except as noted in this Privacy Policy.

USAGE DATA

We may also collect information that your browser sends whenever you use our BH Services or when you access the BH Services by or through a mobile device.  This usage data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Website that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.  When you access the Website by or through a mobile device, this Usage Data may include information such as the type of mobile device you use, your mobile device unique ID, the IP address of your mobile device, your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser you use, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

LOCATION DATA

We may use and store information about your location if you give us permission to do so (“Location Data”). We use this data to provide features of our BH Services, to improve and customize our BH Services.  You can enable or disable location services when you use our BH Services at any time, through your device settings.

PURPOSES FOR PROCESSING DATA

Our lawful purposes for processing your data include consent (where you have given consent), contract (where processing is necessary to deliver the Services you enrolled to receive), protecting your vital interests, performing tasks carried out in the public interest, and the legitimate interests of BH (namely, to help older adults like you to stay safe and healthy by addressing their needs). In short, we collect information so we can provide you and others like you with better Services, helping more older adults to build strong social connections.

While we rely on your consent to process personal data, you have the right to withdraw or decline your consent at any time by contacting the site staff at your designated community center. 

3. WHAT PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you express an interest in obtaining information about us or our services, enroll to receive our Services via text, phone call, or other means, when you participate in activities on our platform, or otherwise when you contact us.

The personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us and the platform, the choices you make, and the services and features you use. The personal information we collect may include, but is not limited to, the following:

• Personal Details: Name, Date of Birth, Phone Number, Email, Address, and Demographic Information.

• Health-Related Information: Information necessary for your care and treatment, including health-related data provided voluntarily or as part of the services offered.

• Preferences and Program Interests: Contact preferences, language preferences, program interests, and other related details.

• Survey and Feedback Data: Feedback and satisfaction information you provide when you take a survey on our platform or via a link sent to you. You have the option to keep your responses anonymous if desired.

• Social Determinants of Health Data: Check-in information such as social activity, social-related needs, loneliness measures, food security, and other similar information.

Additionally, we may receive personal information about you directly from your service organization as part of providing our services. This data enables us to personalize your experience, deliver relevant services, and ensure accurate support for your care and treatment needs. All personal information that you provide to us must be true, complete, and accurate, and you must notify us of any changes to such personal information.

4. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

We operate the Services in conjunction with your community centers’ site staff. Any information, including Personally Identifiable Information, that you share with the Services may be reviewed by authorized BH staff, its contractors and associates for quality control, to contact your relevant Service Providers or to better assist you with your needs. We may use and share the Personally Identifiable Information that we collect via the Services amongst our employees, your caregiver, your community centers’ site staff, agents, contractors, and service providers in order to help us operate, analyze, research, develop, deliver, audit, maintain, and improve our products, content, advertising, communications, and the Services. 

If you provide feedback (such as through a survey or audio recording), that feedback may also be shared with BH staff and relevant service providers. We may also ask for your consent to share your feedback anonymously (with your name edited out) with the public, because your message may inspire other older adults, community partners, and investors to join or support BH. We will use your feedback mainly to improve our service quality.

In addition, please note that we never sell your information to any third party. BH may use your collected data for various purposes general purposes, including, but not limited to:

• To provide and maintain our BH Services

• To notify you about changes to our BH Services

• To provide customer support

• To gather analysis or valuable information so that we can improve our BH Services

• To monitor the usage of our BH Services

• To detect, prevent and address technical issues

5. TRACKING & COOKIES DATA

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our Website and hold certain information.  Cookies are files with small amount of data which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device. Tracking technologies also used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze our Website. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. 

However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Website.

Examples of Cookies we use:

• Session Cookies. We use Session Cookies to operate our Website.

• Preference Cookies. We use Preference Cookies to remember your preferences and various settings.

• Security Cookies. We use Security Cookies for security purposes.

6. DISCLOSURES TO THIRD PARTIES

Please remember that BH cannot serve as your emergency contact. However, we still care about your safety. It is our goal to support you in staying safe and healthy and to do so in the least invasive way possible. In rare cases, this means we might contact your caregivers, your community centers’ site staff, law enforcement, state authorities, or emergency services if your messages or phone calls indicate that you are at imminent risk of death or serious injury, or if we reasonably believe that disclosure is necessary to prevent a person’s death or serious injury. We understand that this can be disruptive, and it won’t happen unless we think it’s necessary. We will first try to work with you and request you to call 911 or other emergency services directly. We will attempt to alert other emergency responders ourselves only if we think it is important to assure your safety and you are not in a capacity to contact them on your own.

Additionally, we may disclose Personally Identifiable Information we collect from you to third parties if we believe such disclosure is necessary: (A) to comply with the law or in response to a subpoena, court order, government request, or other legal process; (B) to protect the interests, rights, safety, or property of BH, its affiliates, employees, agents, or volunteers, including but not limited to staff; (C) to enforce our Terms; (D) in connection with a sale, merger, or change of control of BH or its affiliates, or (E) to address fraud, security, technical issues, or to operate the Services or its infrastructure systems properly.

Note that BH’s staff and community partners are located across the United States, and may not be licensed in your state or trained in your state’s law. Other state laws may apply to your communications, and those state laws may not protect your communications to the same degree, or in the same way, as the laws of your state.

7. NON-PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

When you communicate with us via text, call, or email, in addition to collecting personally identifiable data described above, we also collect certain kinds of anonymous, non-identifiable data, such as the date and time of your communication.

We may anonymize personal data that we collect from you so that it cannot be used to identify or contact you by redacting — or “scrubbing” — personally identifiable details, such as your name, age, or address. This process ensures that the information is completely anonymous and cannot be traced back to you.

We may use and share anonymous and anonymized data with third parties for any lawful purpose, including but not limited to:

• Improving our services and tailoring them to better meet user needs.

• Generating support or insights for [Organization Name, e.g., Blooming Health (BH)].

• Meeting legal or regulatory requirements.

Your personally identifiable information will not be shared in these cases, and all efforts are made to ensure that anonymized data cannot be re-associated with your identity.

8. RETENTION OF INFORMATION

We will use commercially acceptable means to keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, accounting or other legal requirements). 

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize such information, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

]We may retain non personally identifiable data — including the data we scrub — indefinitely, so that we may continue to use it to improve our Services.

9. HOW WE PROTECT YOUR PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

BH cares about you and the security of your Personally Identifiable Information. We follow best practices to store and protect personal information from unauthorized access and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage. This includes using highly secure technology platforms (Google cloud platform, Twilio) that are HIPAA compliant. 

We store all information on the secure cloud and we only permit approved BH employees and third parties to access those servers pursuant to the practices described above. 

However, perfect security does not exist anywhere, including for text messaging/SMS data/phone calls. Although we take appropriate measures to safeguard against unauthorized disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that your Personally Identifiable Information or communications with BH will never be disclosed in a manner inconsistent with this Privacy Policy, and make no representations or warranties regarding the sufficiency of our security measures to prevent unauthorized access or interception by third parties.

YOU SHOULD ALSO PROTECT YOURSELF

Always be careful and responsible regarding your Personally Identifiable Information. We are not responsible for, and cannot control, what others not affiliated with BH do with information you provide to them. You may also choose to delete BH conversations from your phone or make sure to use appropriate screen lock settings to prevent others from accessing your text messages with us.

SERVICE PROVIDERS

We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our Website and BH Services (“Service Providers”), to provide the Website and BH Services on our behalf, to perform Website and BH-related services or to assist us in analyzing how our Website and BH Services are used.  These third parties may have access to some of your basic Personal Data only to perform these specific tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.  

LINKS TO OTHER SITES

Our Website may contain links to other sites that are not operated by us. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that third party’s site. We strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of every site you visit.  We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third-party sites or services.

10. ACCESS/CHANGES TO PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION

You may request access to or changes to Personally Identifiable Information of yours which we have stored by emailing team@gobloominghealth.com. You will be asked to verify your identity in order for us to grant you access to or process changes to your Personally Identifiable Information.

You may request that we delete your Personally Identifiable Information, such as names, ages, phone numbers, email addresses, contact preferences, contact or authentication data, program interests, gender, preferred language, check-in information such as social activity, social related needs, loneliness measures, food security, and other similar information, and texts/message transcripts by contacting the site staff at your designated community center. We will make reasonable efforts to process requests promptly, but may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive, require unreasonable technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of you or others, are otherwise impractical, or which would conflict with a law enforcement matter. Additionally, we will decline to process requests if we believe preservation of your Personally Identifiable Information is necessary: (A) to comply with the law or in response to a subpoena, court order, government request, or other legal obligations; (B) to protect the interests, rights, safety, or property of BH, its employees, agents, or volunteers, including but not limited to community partners; (C) to enforce our Terms; (D) in connection with a sale, merger, or change of control of BH or its affiliates, or (E) to address fraud, security, technical issues, or to operate the Services or their infrastructure systems properly.

11. GOVERNING LAW; INTERNATIONAL USERS

These Terms and the provision of the Services are governed solely by, and shall be interpreted according to, the laws of the State of New York without giving effect to New York’s conflicts of law rules. BH and you both consent to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in the county of New York for any and all disputes arising out of or concerning these Terms. The Services are primarily operated in the United States. If you are located outside of the United States, please be aware that any information you provide will be collected in or transferred to the United States. By using the Services and/or providing us with your information, you consent to the collection and transfer of your information in or out of the United States as described in this Privacy Policy.

12. NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES

This Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP) describes how BH collects, uses, discloses, and protects your Protected Health Information (PHI) and Protected Identifiable Information (PII). We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your PHI and PII in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and ethical standards.

Information We Collect

We may collect various types of PHI, including:

• Name

• Date of birth

• Phone Number

• Email

• Address

• Demographic information

• Health-related information necessary for your care and treatment

How We Use and Disclose Your PHI and PII

We use and disclose your PHI for the following purposes:

• Provide Telecommunication services

• Treatment: Providing, coordinating, and managing your healthcare.

• As required by law: Complying with legal obligations, such as reporting to public health authorities or responding to court orders. 

• Other Permitted Uses and Disclosures: We may use and disclose your PHI for other purposes permitted or required by law, such as research with appropriate safeguards.

We will obtain your written authorization before using or disclosing your PHI for any purpose not described above. We maintain an accurate accounting of disclosures of your PHI, as required by law. You have the right to request an accounting of disclosures of your PHI.

Your Rights

You have the following rights regarding your PHI:

Right to Access: You have the right to access and obtain a copy of your PHI.

• Right to Amend: You have the right to request an amendment to your PHI if you believe it is inaccurate or incomplete.

• Right to Accounting of Disclosures: You have the right to receive an accounting of disclosures of your PHI.

• Right to Request Restrictions: You have the right to request restrictions on certain uses and disclosures of your PHI.

• Right to Confidential Communications: You have the right to request that we communicate with you about your PHI in a certain way or at a certain location.

• Right to File a Complaint: You have the right to file a complaint with us or the Secretary of Health and Human Services if you believe your privacy rights have been violated.

Our Privacy Practices

• Minimization: We limit the collection, use, and disclosure of PHI to the minimum necessary to accomplish the intended purpose.

• Security Safeguards: We implement administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your PHI.

• Workforce Training: We provide privacy and security training to our workforce to ensure they understand their responsibilities for protecting your PHI.

• Breach Notification: We will notify you and appropriate authorities in the event of a breach of your unsecured PHI as required by law.

Request for Accounting of Disclosures

To request a copy of your Accounting of Disclosures for your PHI/PII, please email privacy@gobloominghealth.com with the Subject line: Accounting of Disclosures, and relevant information in the body.

Changes to This NPP

We reserve the right to amend this NPP at any time. Revised NPPs will be posted on our website and made available upon request.

If you have any questions about this NPP or our privacy practices, please contact our Privacy Officer:

Naman Gupta, privacy@gobloominghealth.com 

13. PRIVACY PRACTICE COMPLAINTS

This notice explains how individuals can file complaints regarding the privacy practices of Blooming Health. Blooming Health is committed to protecting the privacy of individuals' protected health information (PHI).

• Individuals have the right to file a complaint if they believe their privacy rights have been violated.

How to File a Complaint

Individuals can file a complaint through various mechanisms, including:

• Email: privacy@gobloominghealth.com

Information to Include in a Complaint

To ensure the efficient processing of complaints, individuals should provide the following information:

• Full name and contact information

• Date of the incident or issue

• Clear and concise description of the complaint

• Any supporting documentation or evidence

Complaint Handling Process

Blooming Health will:

• Acknowledge receipt of complaints within 24 hours.

• Review and investigate all complaints.

• Provide a formal response within 72 hours of receipt.

• Maintain records of complaints.

Oversight

The Senior Official for Privacy (SOP) is responsible for the Complaint Management Process. The Data Governance Body also reviews complaint trends.

Continuous Improvement

Blooming Health will periodically review the process, seek feedback, and provide training to the Privacy Team to ensure its effectiveness.

14. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page.  You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

15. DISCLAIMER

Blooming Health seeks to support older adults in strengthening their social connections, and is not a substitute for professional health care, mental health treatment, psychiatric care, or therapy of any kind. All information presented in this service is for informational purposes only and is not intended as professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Our Services are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 18

Our Website is not intended for children under 18 years of age. No one under age 18 may provide any personal information to or on the Website. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 18. If you are under 18, do not use or provide any information on this Website or through any of its features, register on the Website, use any of the interactive or communications features of this Website, or provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, email address, or any screen name or username you may use, when applicable. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under 18 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 18, please contact us at privacy@gobloominghealth.com.

CALIFORNIA ONLINE PRIVACY PROTECTION ACT (CalOPPA)

We do not support Do Not Track (“DNT”). Do Not Track is a preference you can set in your web browser to inform websites that you do not want to be tracked.  You can enable or disable Do Not Track by visiting the Preferences or Settings page of your web browser.  In addition to the rights as explained in this Policy, California residents who provide Personal Information (as defined in the statute) to obtain products or services for personal, family, or household use are entitled to request and obtain from us, once a calendar year, information about the Personal Information we shared, if any, with other businesses for marketing uses. If applicable, this information would include the categories of Personal Information and the names and addresses of those businesses with which we shared such personal information for the immediately prior calendar year (e.g., requests made in the current year will receive information about the prior year). To obtain this information please contact us.

If you are a California resident, California law may provide you with additional rights regarding our use of your personal information. To learn more about your California privacy rights, visit https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa

CONTACT US

If you have any questions or concerns about our Privacy Policy and security practices described here, please contact: privacy@gobloominghealth.com