PACES Buddy Terms of Use and Privacy Policy
Version 1. Effective from 10 November 2026.
Please read these Terms carefully. By pressing "Agree and send code", you enter into a legally binding agreement with us. If you do not agree, you must not use PACES Buddy.
Part A: Terms of Use
1. About these Terms
1.1 Who we are. PACES Buddy is the website at pacesbuddy.com and its related services and features (the "Service"). The Service is run by the operator named in section B13 of this page ("we", "us", "our"). You can contact us at hello@pacesbuddy.com.
1.2 What makes up the agreement. Your agreement with us consists of this page, made up of Part A (these "Terms") and Part B (our "Privacy Policy"), and any additional rules we show you within the Service. If Part A and Part B conflict on how personal data is handled, Part B applies.
1.3 How you accept. You accept these Terms by pressing a button in the Service that says you agree. Your electronic acceptance has the same effect as a signature. We keep a record of each acceptance.
1.4 If you do not accept. You must not use the Service if you do not accept these Terms. Accepting them is a condition of access.
2. Your past records
2.1 This clause applies if you used the Service, held an account, or contacted us before you accepted these Terms.
2.2 "Past Records" means all information we hold that relates to you and was collected before you accepted these Terms. This includes your email address and account details, sign-in history, saved cases, transcripts, marksheets, usage and cost records, feedback, and correspondence with us.
2.3 Your Past Records stay with us and remain linked to your account.
2.4 From the moment you accept these Terms, your Past Records are covered by these Terms and the Privacy Policy as if they had been collected after you accepted, including every use and every sharing of information described in these Terms and the Privacy Policy. This replaces any earlier statement on the Service about how we would use that information.
2.5 Items you deleted from your history before accepting these Terms have already been erased and are not included.
3. Who may use the Service
3.1 You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding contract.
3.2 The Service is intended for doctors, medical students, other healthcare professionals, and people preparing for medical examinations.
3.3 Some parts of the Service are available only to certain groups of users, for example according to the email address used to sign in. We decide who may access each part. Our decision is final, and we are not required to give reasons.
3.4 You are responsible for making sure that your use of the Service is lawful where you are.
4. What the Service is
4.1 The Service provides simulated exam practice using artificial intelligence. It includes an AI examiner, simulated patients, practice cases, marksheets, and voice dictation.
4.2 The Service is for education and exam practice only.
4.3 The Service is independent. It is not run by, affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom, MRCP(UK), any Royal College, or any other examination body. It is also not run by, affiliated with, or endorsed by any hospital, healthcare cluster, university, or training programme, unless we expressly say so in writing. "MRCP" and "PACES" and other names of examinations belong to their respective owners.
5. Not medical advice, and no patient information
5.1 Nothing in the Service is medical advice. The Service does not diagnose, treat, or give guidance on the care of any real person, and it creates no doctor-patient relationship.
5.2 You must not use the Service to make, or to help you make, decisions about the care of a real patient.
5.3 The Service does not replace clinical training, bedside teaching, supervision, or examining real patients.
5.4 You must not enter, speak, upload, or otherwise submit real patient identifiers or real patient information. This includes names, identity card numbers, hospital or medical record numbers, dates of birth, addresses, contact details, photographs, and any detail that could identify a real person. If you do so, you are solely responsible, and you must tell us promptly at hello@pacesbuddy.com.
6. AI output and case content
6.1 AI output can be wrong, incomplete, inconsistent, or out of date. You must check anything that matters against authoritative sources.
6.2 Marksheets, grades, comments, and feedback are estimates produced by AI. They are not official marks and do not predict how you will perform in any real examination.
6.3 Cases in the Service, including any described as past-exam recall, are unofficial. They may be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date, and they do not represent the content of any past or future examination.
6.4 We do not promise or guarantee that using the Service will help you pass any examination or improve your result.
7. Accounts and sign-in
7.1 You sign in using your email address and a one-time code sent to that address.
7.2 Your account is personal to you. You must not share it or let anyone else use it.
7.3 You are responsible for keeping access to your email secure, and for everything done through your account.
7.4 You may hold only one account unless we agree otherwise. We may link, limit, or close duplicate accounts.
7.5 You must tell us promptly at hello@pacesbuddy.com if you believe someone else has used your account.
7.6 We may require you to sign in again, or to accept updated Terms, before you can continue using the Service.
8. Free access, allowances, and fees
8.1 The Service is currently free, subject to a usage allowance. We may set, change, reduce, or withdraw any allowance at any time, with or without notice. We are not required to show you how much of your allowance remains.
8.2 Any increase to your allowance is at our discretion, may be temporary, and does not entitle you to any future increase.
8.3 We may introduce fees in future. We will tell you before any fee applies to you, and you will not have to pay unless you agree.
9. Using your own AI key
9.1 Once you have signed in, you may be able to use the Service with an API key from an AI provider (your "AI Key").
9.2 Your AI Key is stored only in your browser. It passes through our servers each time it is used, so that your request can reach the AI provider. We do not save, log, or share your AI Key.
9.3 Your relationship with the AI provider is between you and that provider. You are responsible for following its terms and for all of its charges. We are not responsible for any charge, refusal, suspension, or data handling by that provider.
9.4 We collect information about your use of the Service in the same way when you use your own AI Key, including the content of your practice sessions, the AI company and model used, and how much was used.
9.5 You are responsible for keeping your AI Key safe, and for removing it from shared devices.
10. Voice dictation
10.1 If you use dictation, your audio passes through our server to a speech-recognition provider, which turns it into text.
10.2 We do not save your audio. The speech-recognition provider may hold it for a limited period under its own policy, as described in the Privacy Policy.
10.3 The text produced from your speech is treated like anything you type, and is collected.
11. What we collect
11.1 We collect information about you and about how you use the Service. The Privacy Policy sets out the details. In summary, this includes:
(a) your account, sign-ins, and email address;
(b) your internet address (IP address), device, browser, screen, language, and time zone;
(c) your approximate location, which we work out from the information above and from how you use the Service;
(d) your activity in the Service, including the pages and features you use, the cases you open, abandon, or finish, and related timing;
(e) the content of your practice sessions with the AI examiner and simulated patients, including what you type or dictate and the replies you receive, whether or not you finish the case ("Session Content");
(f) your marksheets and grades; and
(g) your use of your own AI Key, as described in clause 9.
11.2 Members of the project team and people working with us may access and review your Session Content and other records for the purposes in these Terms and the Privacy Policy.
11.3 We do not keep your AI Key, your sign-in codes in readable form, or your voice recordings.
12. Research and improving the Service
12.1 Our main purposes in using the information we collect are academic research and optimising the user experience.
12.2 Research and improvement are part of how the Service operates. You cannot use the Service while opting out of them.
12.3 Research may include educational studies, evaluation of the Service and of AI in medical education, publications, conference presentations, theses, grant applications, and reports to funders and institutions.
12.4 Information used for research will be anonymised or combined with that of other users, except where clause 12.5 or 12.7 applies. We will not name you, or publish anything that identifies you, without your permission.
12.5 We may link your records with records held by your hospital, training programme, or institution, where that institution's approved process, including any ethics review, allows it.
12.6 We may develop, test, evaluate, and train AI systems, prompts, and marking methods using anonymised information. We may also re-run Session Content through AI providers in order to check and test the Service.
12.7 Where research needs review by an ethics board, it will be carried out in line with that board's decision. If the law or an ethics board requires your separate consent for a particular use of your personal data, we will ask for it separately.
12.8 You are not entitled to any payment, credit, or share in any research, publication, grant, product, or other result.
13. Your content and feedback
13.1 "Your Content" means anything you type, dictate, upload, or send to us through the Service or by email, including your part of the Session Content.
13.2 You keep any rights you already have in Your Content. You grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable licence, with the right to sublicense, to host, copy, store, analyse, adapt, and otherwise use Your Content for the purposes described in these Terms and the Privacy Policy.
13.3 You confirm that you are entitled to submit Your Content, and that it does not breach anyone's rights, any duty of confidence, the law, or the rules of any examination body.
13.4 If you send us feedback, corrections, suggestions, or exam recollections, we may use them freely and without payment or acknowledgement. You are responsible for checking whether you are allowed to share any information about an examination.
14. Our intellectual property
14.1 The Service is proprietary. We or our licensors own all rights in the Service, including its software, source code, prompts, AI instructions, marking rubrics, cases, answer keys, grounding notes, marksheet formats, design, name, and logo.
14.2 We give you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service for your own exam preparation. We reserve all other rights.
14.3 You may keep copies of your own transcripts and marksheets for your personal study.
14.4 An earlier version of part of the software was published under the MIT licence. That licence applies only to that published version. It does not apply to any later version of the software, or to the cases or any other content of the Service.
14.5 Some materials, including certain clinical images, belong to third parties and are used for education. If you own material in the Service and want it credited or removed, contact us at hello@pacesbuddy.com.
15. Rules of use
You must not, and must not help anyone else to:
(a) copy, scrape, download in bulk, republish, sell, or share cases, answer keys, marksheets, or other content of the Service, except as clause 14.3 allows;
(b) try to obtain hidden case files, answer keys, prompts, or AI instructions, or try to make the AI reveal them;
(c) copy, reverse engineer, decompile, or build a competing product from the Service;
(d) use bots, scripts, or other automated means to access the Service;
(e) get around any restriction, allowance, or access control, including by using multiple accounts or by misrepresenting who you are or where you work;
(f) share your account or sign-in codes;
(g) interfere with, overload, probe, or attack the Service or its security;
(h) submit anything unlawful, harmful, abusive, or infringing, or any malicious code;
(i) use the Service to train or improve any other AI system; or
(j) use the Service in breach of the law or of these Terms.
16. Examination rules
16.1 You are responsible for following the rules of any examination body, including rules on confidentiality and on sharing examination content.
16.2 You must not use the Service during an examination.
17. Changes to the Service and availability
17.1 We may change, add to, remove, suspend, or stop any part of the Service at any time, with or without notice.
17.2 We do not promise that the Service will be available, uninterrupted, secure, or free of errors. The Service depends on third-party providers and on limited funding, and may stop without warning.
17.3 We do not promise to keep your saved cases or other information available to you, and you should not rely on the Service to store anything important.
18. Suspension and termination
18.1 We may suspend or end your access at any time, with or without notice, including if we believe you have breached these Terms.
18.2 You may stop using the Service at any time, and you may ask us to close your account by writing to hello@pacesbuddy.com.
18.3 After your access ends, we may keep and use your information as these Terms and the Privacy Policy describe.
18.4 Clauses 2, 11 to 14, and 19 to 26, and Part B, continue to apply after your access ends.
19. Disclaimers
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available". We exclude all warranties, conditions, and representations, whether express or implied, including those of accuracy, reliability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.
20. Limits on our liability
20.1 Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot legally be excluded or limited.
20.2 Subject to clause 20.1, we are not liable for:
(a) any examination result, examination fee, or effect on your training, career, or income;
(b) any decision or action taken in reliance on the Service or on AI output;
(c) any harm arising from patient information that you submit;
(d) any loss of data, or loss of access to the Service;
(e) any charge by an AI provider, or any act or omission of a third-party provider; or
(f) any indirect or consequential loss, or loss of profit, opportunity, or goodwill.
20.3 Subject to clause 20.1, our total liability to you for all claims relating to the Service is limited to S$100.
20.4 To the extent permitted by law, any claim relating to the Service must be brought within 12 months of the event giving rise to it.
20.5 You acknowledge that the Service is provided free of charge, and that these limits are reasonable in that light.
21. Indemnity
You agree to compensate us for losses, liabilities, and reasonable costs that we, or the people who work with us, suffer arising from your breach of these Terms, from Your Content, or from any patient information that you submit.
22. Transfer of the Service
22.1 We may transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms, the Service, and your information, including your Past Records, to another person or organisation. This includes a healthcare or academic institution that takes over the Service.
22.2 You may not transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms.
23. Changes to these Terms
23.1 We may change these Terms and the Privacy Policy at any time. We will show the date of the latest version.
23.2 For significant changes, we will tell you through the Service or by email, and we may ask you to accept the new version before you can continue using the Service.
23.3 If you continue to use the Service after a change takes effect, you accept the changed Terms. Where the law requires your fresh consent for a change, for example a new purpose for using your personal data, we will ask for it before the change applies to you. If you do not accept a change, you must stop using the Service.
24. Notices
We may send you notices by email or through the Service. You must send notices to us at hello@pacesbuddy.com.
25. General
25.1 Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service, and they replace all earlier statements on the subject, including earlier statements on the website.
25.2 Severability. If any part of these Terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
25.3 No waiver. If we do not enforce a right, we do not give it up.
25.4 Events beyond our control. We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including the failure of a third-party provider.
25.5 No partnership. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, agency, or employment relationship.
25.6 Third parties. A person who is not a party to these Terms has no right under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 2001 of Singapore to enforce any of them.
25.7 Legal rights. Nothing in these Terms removes any right you have under law that cannot be excluded by agreement.
26. Governing law and disputes
26.1 These Terms are governed by the laws of Singapore.
26.2 If you have a concern, please contact us first at hello@pacesbuddy.com so that we can try to resolve it.
26.3 The courts of Singapore have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute relating to these Terms or the Service, except where the law of the country where you live gives you a right that cannot be excluded.
Part B: Privacy Policy
This Part B is our Privacy Policy (also called "this Policy"). It forms part of our agreement with you. Words defined in Part A have the same meaning here.
B1. Who we are
PACES Buddy is run by the operator named in section B13 ("we", "us", "our"). For any question about your personal data, contact our data protection officer at hello@pacesbuddy.com.
B2. What we collect
Account and contact
- Your email address, including any address you enter when asking for a sign-in code, and the domain it belongs to.
- When you joined, signed in, and signed out, and any failed sign-in attempt.
- Your record of agreeing to our Terms and this Policy.
- A scrambled (hashed) record of each sign-in code. We do not keep the code itself.
- Your allowance and usage records.
Connection and device
Collected each time your browser contacts our servers, or by the Service in your browser:
- Your IP address.
- Your device and browser type, operating system, screen and window size, touch or mouse input, memory and processor count, connection type, and whether the app is installed.
- Your language settings, time zone, and light or dark mode.
- The website you came from, and any campaign tags in the link you followed.
- A random number stored in your browser, which recognises that browser on later visits and can show when one browser is used with more than one account.
Approximate location
We estimate your approximate location and where you may be from, which can be as specific as a city or postcode area. We do this using location information associated with your IP address, together with your browser's time zone and languages, your email domain, the hours you usually practise, the website you came from, and anything you tell us.
Activity
- How you move around the Service, such as the pages and screens you visit, the buttons you press, and the time you spend on them.
- Filters and search words you use, cases you look at, and locked cases you try to open.
- The cases you open, abandon, or finish, and how they ended.
- How you work through a case, such as reading and response times, the length of your responses, how they were entered (typed, pasted, or dictated), and any changes you made to a dictation.
- When you leave and return to the page, so that we can measure active time.
- Marksheets you open, and how long you spend on them.
- Your settings, including the model you choose, whether you add or remove an AI Key, and whether you allow or refuse the microphone.
- Error messages you see, failed or refused requests, and the app version you are using.
Session Content and marksheets
- The content of your practice sessions with the AI examiner and simulated patients, whether or not you finish the case.
- This includes text you type, text produced from your dictation, the replies you receive, and the look-ups made by the examiner.
- This is kept separately from your saved history, so deleting a case from your history does not remove it.
- Your marksheets, grades, and comments.
- The AI model used, how much AI was used, how long it took, the estimated cost, and any error.
Your own AI Key
If you use your own AI Key, your practice sessions pass through our servers, and we collect their content in the same way. We also collect the fact that your own key was used, the AI company and model, how much was used, an estimated cost, how long it took, and any error, such as an invalid key or low balance. We do not keep the key itself.
Dictation
We collect the length of your audio, the text it produced, the model used, and whether it worked. We do not keep your audio.
Feedback and correspondence
Anything you send through the feedback form or by email, and our replies.
B3. What we do not keep
- Your AI Key. It is stored only in your browser. It passes through our servers each time it is used, so that your request can reach your AI provider, and it is never saved, logged, or shared.
- Your sign-in codes in readable form.
- Your voice recordings. Audio passes through our server to a speech-recognition provider. Providers hold audio under their own policies, which may allow them to keep it for a limited period, for example to investigate faults or abuse.
B4. How we use your information
Our main purposes are:
1. Academic research and educational evaluation, including studies, publications, conference presentations, theses, grant applications, and reports to funders and institutions, using anonymised or combined information. 2. Optimising the user experience, including improving the Service, the examiner, the cases, and the marking, understanding how people use and learn with the Service, and building new features and products.
We also use your information for:
3. Checking and testing the AI examiner and marking, including re-running Session Content through AI providers, and developing, testing, and training AI systems using anonymised information. 4. Linking your records with those held by your hospital, training programme, or institution, where that institution's approved process, including any ethics review, allows it. 5. Running the Service, including sign-in, allowances, security, preventing abuse, and spotting shared or duplicate accounts. 6. Understanding who uses the Service and where they come from. 7. Contacting you about the Service, about your account, and about research. 8. Meeting legal obligations, and establishing or defending legal claims.
Members of the project team, and people working with us, may access and review your Session Content and other records for these purposes.
Marksheets and other AI output are generated automatically. They are for practice only, and they have no legal or similarly significant effect on you.
B5. Past records
If you used PACES Buddy before you agreed to this Policy, everything we already hold about you is kept, and from the time you agree it is covered by this Policy and our Terms. See clause 2 in Part A.
B6. Who may receive your information
- Service providers that help us run PACES Buddy, including Vercel (hosting, analytics, and AI routing), Neon (database), Resend (email), Groq (speech recognition), and the AI and cloud providers we use to run the examiner and other features, which may change over time.
- Your AI provider, if you use your own AI Key.
- Project team members, collaborators, and supervisors working on the Service or on research.
- Ethics boards, funders, and institutions connected with research or with the Service. These receive anonymised or combined information unless their approved process provides otherwise.
- Your hospital, training programme, or institution, where this is needed to link records under that institution's approved process.
- A successor. If the Service is transferred, for example to a healthcare or academic institution, your information may be transferred with it.
- Authorities and others, where the law requires it, or where it is needed to protect people, the Service, or our rights.
B7. Overseas processing
Our main database and servers are in Singapore. Your information, including your Session Content, may also be processed in other countries, wherever our AI and cloud providers operate. We may use any AI model, and the models and providers we use may change over time. Protections in those countries may differ from those in Singapore.
B8. Cookies and browser storage
- A secure cookie keeps you signed in for up to 30 days.
- Browser storage holds your settings, your AI Key if you add one, your random browser number, your case in progress, and your local history.
- Our website analytics provide page statistics without using cookies.
Clearing your browser removes these items from that browser. It does not remove what we have already collected on our servers.
B9. How long we keep your information
We keep your information for as long as necessary for the purposes described in these Terms and this Policy, including research, and for any further period needed to meet the requirements of the law, an ethics board, or a funder, or for other legal or business purposes.
Anonymised information may be kept indefinitely.
B10. Security
We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your information. No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee security. If a data breach requires notification under the law, we will notify the relevant authority and affected people as the law requires.
B11. Your choices and rights
Subject to the law, you may:
- ask for a copy of your personal data and how it has been used;
- ask us to correct your personal data;
- withdraw your consent; and
- ask us to close your account.
Write to hello@pacesbuddy.com. We may need to confirm your identity.
Using PACES Buddy involves the collection described in this Policy. If you withdraw consent, we will stop collecting, using, and disclosing your personal data, and you will no longer be able to use PACES Buddy. We will tell you what else withdrawal means for you before acting on it. We may keep, use, or disclose information where the law, an ethics board, or an exception in the law allows it. Withdrawal does not reach information that has already been anonymised or used in completed research.
B12. Users in the United Kingdom and European Economic Area
If UK or EU data protection law applies to you:
- We rely on the following legal bases: performance of our contract with you (running the Service); legitimate interests (improving the Service, security, and research); consent where we ask for it; and legal obligation.
- You also have the rights to erasure, restriction, data portability, and objection, within the limits of the law.
- You may complain to your data protection authority. In the UK, this is the Information Commissioner's Office.
- Transfers outside the UK or EEA are made as described in section B7, with the safeguards the law requires.
B13. Contact and operator
hello@pacesbuddy.com
PACES Buddy is operated by Arthur Yong, an individual based in Singapore.