Privacy policy

The Friendship Project

1. We respect your privacy 

At The Friendship Project Pty Ltd (ABN 85 664 554 134) (we, us, our, or The Friendship Project) we are committed to protecting your personal information.

This privacy policy sets important information for your use of our educational services (Education), telehealth services (Telehealth Services), and our website and associated social media channels (Website) (together, the Services). 

Clinical services available through the Telehealth Services are provided by independent practitioners who use The Friendship Project platform. The Friendship Project provides administrative and telehealth infrastructure services that support those practitioners. Where you engage with a practitioner through the Telehealth Services, your personal and sensitive information may be shared with that practitioner for the purpose of providing clinical services to you. 

By accessing and using our Website or the Services, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this privacy policy. If you have any concerns about this privacy policy, you should not access or use our Website or the Services.   

You should also review our Website terms and conditions.  

Personal information is information we hold which is identified, or reasonably identifiable, as being about you (whether true or not, and whether or not recorded in a material form). Sensitive information is personal information that’s treated with a higher degree of protection, and includes information about your health. 

2. How we collect your personal information  

2.1 We collect personal information for the purpose of conducting our business as a provider of the Services, including where you have provided information to us by: 

2.2 You have the right not to provide your personal information to us. You may not be able to use the Services, or some features of our Website or the Services, if you choose not to provide this information.  

2.3 Where you register for or use Telehealth Services, we may provide you with additional privacy collection notices or consent forms at the time your personal information is collected. 

3. Types of personal information we collect 

3.1 The personal information that we collect may include:  

Sensitive information that we collect may include your medical history, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment information; information contained in practitioners’ notes and clinical records; and information you provide during intake or onboarding for the Telehealth Services. Where we collect sensitive information, we do so for the purpose of administering the Services, facilitating access to clinical services provided by independent practitioners, supporting the operation of our telehealth systems, and complying with applicable legal and regulatory obligations. We do not provide medical or clinical treatment services ourselves unless expressly stated otherwise. All clinical services are provided by independent practitioners. 

3.2 We may collect government-related identifiers, such as your Medicare number, where reasonably necessary to facilitate healthcare services and administrative processes (including Medicare claims). We do not adopt these identifiers as our own identifiers and will only use or disclose them as permitted under applicable law, including the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). 

3.3 We do not knowingly collect personal information from persons under 18 years of age without the involvement or consent of a parent or legal guardian where required by law or our policies. 

4. How we use your personal information 

4.1 We collect, hold, and use your personal information to provide the Services to you; facilitate connections between users and independent practitioners; manage bookings and appointments; process payments and administrative transactions; assist with Medicare and insurance claims and related administrative processes; communicate with you; improve our platform, systems and user experience; maintain and develop our business systems; and respond to your feedback or enquiries. We may also contact you to make you aware of new and additional products, services and opportunities available to you. We do not use your sensitive information for any marketing purposes. 

4.2 We may contact you by a variety of measures including, but not limited to telephone, email, SMS or mail.  

4.3 We may monitor and record communications with you, including emails and phone conversations, where reasonably necessary for training, quality assurance, administrative or legal purposes and where permitted by law. Telehealth consultations will only be recorded where you have separately consented or where otherwise permitted by law.  

4.4 You may at any time opt-out of receiving marketing material by contacting us at info@thefriendshipproject.com.au or by following the unsubscribe instructions on any marketing communication you receive from us. Removal from any marketing distribution lists may take several business days following the date of your request. 

4.5 To the extent permitted by applicable law, we retain information about you after we have provided the Services to you. This information will be held and used for as long as permitted for legal, regulatory and legitimate business purposes. 

4.6 When your personal information is no longer required by us, unless we are required by law to retain it, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identity your personal information securely. 

5. When we disclose your personal information  

5.1 We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, agents, suppliers or subcontractors as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. 

5.2 In some circumstances we may need to disclose your personal information, including sensitive information, if we consider there is an emergency or safety situation affecting you or others, or where we are required to do so by law. 

5.3 If you use the Telehealth Services, we may disclose your personal and sensitive information to other health providers, specialists, hospitals, and pharmacists; to Medicare and your private health fund; and to regulatory authorities where we are required to do so. 

5.4 We may from time to time need to disclose personal information to comply with a legal requirement, such as a law, regulation, court order, subpoena, warrant, in the course of a legal proceeding or in response to a law enforcement agency request.  

5.5 We may also use your personal information to protect our Website, our intellectual property, and our property or safety or that of our customers or third parties. 

5.6 Information that we collect may from time to time be stored, processed in or transferred to or between parties located in countries outside Australia, for example when we use cloud data storage. This may include countries which do not provide the same level of protection as the laws of Australia. Where applicable, we will make any such international transfers subject to appropriate or suitable safeguards. You may contact us at any time using the contact details below if you would like further information on these safeguards.  

5.7 If there is a change of control in our business or a sale or transfer of business assets, we may transfer, to the extent permissible at law, our user databases, together with any personal information and non-personal information contained in those databases, to a potential or actual purchaser.  

5.8 Where we disclose your personal information to third parties, we will request that the third party use appropriate protections for your personal information. 

6. Security of your personal information 

6.1 We are committed to ensuring that the information you provide to us is secure. To minimise the risk of unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure information and protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure. 

6.2 We take measures to safeguard against unauthorised disclosures of information. However, the transmission and exchange of information, especially via the internet, is inherently risky. We cannot guarantee the security of any information that you transmit to us or receive from us, and we cannot guarantee to you that personal information that we collect will not be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy. 

6.3 If you choose to communicate with us by email, please be aware that email is not a secure method of communication and may not be encrypted. Personal or sensitive information transmitted by email may be intercepted, lost or accessed by unauthorised parties. By communicating with us via email or sending personal or health information by email, you acknowledge and accept these risks.   

6.4 In the event that we have reason to suspect that a data breach has occurred we will undertake an assessment in accordance with the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme under the Privacy Act 1988.  

7. Access to your personal information 

7.1 You can access and/or correct your personal information, subject to exceptions allowed by law. If you would like a copy of the information which we hold about you, please contact us at info@thefriendshipproject.com.au. A small administrative fee may be payable for the provision of information. We may require reasonable proof of your identity before providing access to, or correcting, information.  

7.2 Where you use the Telehealth Services, you may request transfer of clinical records held through the Telehealth Services to another healthcare practitioner, subject to applicable legal and professional obligations. 

7.3 We reserve the right to refuse to provide you with information that we hold about you, where permitted by applicable laws.  

8. Complaints about privacy 

8.1 If you have any complaints about our privacy practices, please feel free to send in details of your complaints to info@thefriendshipproject.com.au. We take complaints very seriously and will respond shortly after receiving written notice of your complaint. 

8.2 More information about your rights in relation to privacy is available from the Privacy Commissioner at www.oaic.gov.au.  

9. Changes to privacy policy 

9.1 Please be aware that we may change this privacy policy in the future. Changes will be effective when the updated version is made available on our Website. Please check back from time to time to review our privacy policy. 

10. Cookies and data 

10.1 When you visit our Website we may collect certain information such as browser type, operating system, website visited immediately before coming to our site, etc. This information is used in an aggregated manner to analyse how people use our site, such that we can improve the Services. 

10.2 In order to improve your experience on our Website, and for the purposes of marketing the Services on other websites you may visit, we may from time to time use cookies or similar functionality. You may disable the use of cookies via your Internet browser settings, but this may prevent you from taking full advantage of our Website.  

10.3 Third party vendors, such as Google, show our marketing material on websites across the Internet, and use cookies to serve ads to you based on your past visits to our Website. You can opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting Google’s My Ad Centre here.   

10.4 Our Website uses Google Analytics, a service that enables the tracking of user analytics including but not limited to browser information, operating system information, pages viewed while browsing the Services and Website session times and referring website addresses, and enables us to help understand traffic and usage of the Service. Information about you regarding your usage behaviour is held by Google and is subject to its privacy policy which can be viewed here. Information about privacy issues relating to Google Analytics can be found here. 

10.5 We may use pixels, web beacons and other storage technologies from third parties, including Meta, to collect or receive information from the Website and elsewhere on the internet and third parties, including Meta, use that information to provide measurement services, and target and deliver ads. 

10.6 We may also use other third-party providers. You can opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies, or the collection and use of information for ad targeting, by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt out page or AdChoices. 

11. Third party sites 

11.1 Our Website may from time to time have links to other websites not owned or controlled by us, which may have their own privacy policies. These links are meant for your convenience only. Links to third party websites do not constitute sponsorship or endorsement of these websites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of other websites. 

12. Contact Details 

12.1 If you have enquiries about this privacy policy, please contact us at info@thefriendshipproject.com.au. 

Last updated 7/05/26