Privacy Policy
Notewright ("Notewright," "we," "us") provides a clinical documentation app for licensed mental health clinicians. This Privacy Policy explains what information the app collects, how it's used, where it's stored, and what choices you have. It applies to the Notewright iOS app and does not apply to any other product or service.
Notewright is a tool used by clinicians in the course of their practice. If you are a client of a clinician who uses Notewright, please direct privacy questions to your clinician directly, not to Notewright — your clinician controls the client data entered into the app.
1. What information the app collects
Notewright is designed to minimize what it collects and to keep clinical data on your device rather than on our servers. Specifically:
Client records. Client records are identified by initials and an internal ID only — Notewright does not ask for or store a client's full name anywhere in the app.
Session content. Session transcripts (captured via on-device speech recognition — see §4), extracted clinical bullet points, AI-generated draft notes, treatment goals, diagnosis information, and screener/assessment results (e.g., PHQ-9, GAD-7) that you enter or that the app generates during your use.
Appointment information. Appointment dates and times, linked to a client's initials/ID. If you enable calendar import, this may be populated automatically from appointment titles in a calendar you select (see §5).
Style-learning data. If enabled, examples of AI-drafted note text alongside your edited final version, used to help the app match your writing style over time.
Account and usage information. Your access to AI-assisted features is authorized through an account credential tied to your subscription, plus a usage counter associated with that credential to enforce your plan's monthly AI usage allowance. The exact fields captured by the account/subscription system are still being finalized and will be listed precisely here before general availability.
Device permissions data. With your permission, the app accesses: your device microphone and Apple's on-device speech recognition (for dictation), your device camera (for scanning handwritten notes — see §9), Face ID/Touch ID or your device passcode (required every time the app opens or returns from background — not optional), and a calendar you select (to import appointments).
What we do not collect. Notewright does not use any third-party analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting service. We do not track your usage for marketing purposes.
2. Where this information is stored
Client and session data is stored locally on your device, in the app's private storage area — not in a database we operate. We do not have server-side access to your client records, session transcripts, diagnoses, or notes.
The only exception: when you use an AI-assisted feature (note extraction, generation, or revision — currently available for SOAP, DAP, GIRP, BIRP, Biopsychosocial Evaluation, Master Treatment Plan, and EMDR note types), the relevant transcript or note text is sent to our backend, which forwards it to Amazon Web Services' Bedrock AI service to generate a response, and is not stored by our backend afterward. See §7 for detail on this specific data flow.
A note on device backups: if you have iCloud Backup (or a local encrypted computer backup) enabled for your device, the data described above is included in that backup by default, the same way it would be for most apps that store data in their private app storage — Notewright does not currently take a special action to exclude it. We are actively evaluating whether to change this, weighed against the risk that excluding app data from backup means losing all client records permanently if your device is lost, stolen, or replaced without a backup. Until we finalize that decision, treat this policy's statements about local storage as describing where the data originates and is used, not as a guarantee that a copy never exists anywhere else, including in your own device backups.
3. How your device backup and account access affects this data
Because this data lives in ordinary app storage on your device, anyone with the same level of access as you have to your device or its backups — including your own iCloud account, a device-management (MDM) profile your employer may have installed, or the standard "erase and restore" tools built into iOS — has access to it in the same way they would to any other data on your phone. This is not unique to Notewright; it follows from where the data is stored. If your organization manages your device, ask them about their own data-handling policies for backed-up app data.
4. Speech recognition and dictation
When you dictate a session, Notewright uses Apple's on-device speech recognition to convert your voice to text directly on your device. This is configured to run entirely on-device rather than through Apple's cloud transcription service, so your audio itself is not transmitted anywhere by this step. The resulting text is then handled as described in §7 if you use an AI-assisted feature.
Speech recognition can occasionally mishear words, including clinically significant ones. Always review dictated and AI-processed text before relying on it or including it in a signed clinical note.
5. Calendar access
If you choose to connect a calendar, Notewright reads (but never writes to or modifies) events from the specific calendar(s) you select, in order to automatically populate appointment dates for your clients. This access is read-only and used solely to help build your appointment list within the app.
6. Safety-related content
If your notes include information about suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, self-harm, or safety planning, that content is handled by a separate, dedicated part of the app and is never sent to any AI model, in either direction — it is not included in the data sent for AI extraction or note generation, and any AI-generated note text is not permitted to introduce or alter it. It is stored locally on your device the same way other clinical content is (see §2), formatted and displayed by the app itself rather than generated by AI.
7. AI-assisted note extraction, generation, and revision
Notewright offers AI-assisted features — converting a session transcript into structured clinical bullet points, generating prose note text from those bullet points, and revising a draft note based on your feedback — for SOAP, DAP, GIRP, BIRP, Biopsychosocial Evaluation, Master Treatment Plan, and EMDR note formats. (Discharge Summary is the one note format currently offered in the app without AI assistance available; it is used as a manual-entry note type. SOAP and DAP notes can also be documented fully manually — see §8.)
When you use one of these AI-assisted features:
- The relevant text (a transcript segment, a set of bullet points, or a draft note) is sent from your device to Notewright's backend, hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). If you've customized any Voice & Terminology settings (Settings → Documentation & Tracking) — how the app refers to you or your client, note length, terminology register, or your own free-text Custom Instructions — those preferences are included alongside the clinical content on note generation and revision requests, so the AI can apply them. These preferences are not client data; they describe how you want your own notes written.
- Our backend forwards that text to AWS's Bedrock AI service (currently using Anthropic's Claude model) to generate a response, and returns that response to your device.
- Our backend does not store this content. It does not retain transcripts, bullet points, note text, or the voice/terminology preferences described above after the request completes — it only stores non-clinical account and usage metadata described in §1.
- AWS's own handling of this data is governed by Notewright's agreement with AWS, which includes AWS's Business Associate Addendum for HIPAA-eligible services. The precise scope of that coverage is being finalized with counsel and will be confirmed here before general availability.
AI-generated content can be inaccurate or can occasionally state something not actually present in your source material. You are responsible for reviewing all AI-assisted content for accuracy before relying on it or including it in a signed clinical record.
8. Manual Mode
For SOAP and DAP notes, you can turn off "Use AI Backend" in Settings and document a session by typing directly into each section instead. When this setting is off, nothing about that session — no transcript, bullet point, or note text — is transmitted anywhere; the note is assembled entirely on your device. Other note formats still require AI assistance to produce a note.
9. AI feature availability and third-party services
Notewright uses a single AI provider for every AI-assisted feature in the app, including handwritten note conversion (§10): the AWS-hosted service described in §7. We do not use OpenAI or any other AI provider for any feature.
10. Camera and handwritten note scanning ("Finish My Note")
If you use the app's document-scanning feature, photos you take are processed for text recognition entirely on your device using Apple's on-device Vision framework. The images themselves are discarded immediately after text is extracted — they are never saved to your device's Photos library, never uploaded anywhere, and never retained by the app or transmitted to us or to AWS.
After on-device text recognition, the app shows you the recognized text for review before anything is sent anywhere. Once you approve it, only that reviewed text — never the photo — is sent for AI-assisted note extraction, following the same data flow, safety-content handling, and retention practices described in §6 and §7.
11. Your ability to access, correct, and delete data
Because your client and session data lives on your device, you have direct control over it at all times through the app itself: you can edit or correct a client's information, edit or delete individual sessions, and permanently delete all locally stored data (clients, sessions, goals, appointments, learned writing style, and settings) using the "Clear All Local Data" control in Settings → About. This action is irreversible.
12. Data retention
Client and session data remains on your device until you delete it yourself (individually, or via "Clear All Local Data"), or until you delete the app, which removes the app's local storage per standard iOS behavior. We do not independently retain or have access to a copy of this data to delete on our end, because we never received or stored it in the first place (see §2, §7).
13. Children's privacy
Notewright is a professional tool intended for use by licensed clinicians and is not directed at or knowingly used by children.
14. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. How we'll notify beta practices of material changes is still being finalized; until then, check this page for the current version.
15. Contact
Questions about this policy can be directed to [email protected].