The ground rules for using Care-Lo

1. What Care-Lo is

Care-Lo is an online platform that helps people in Pakistan find nurses, physiotherapists and caregivers who visit patients at home. We built the website and the tools on it: search, healthcare professional profiles, chat and service requests.

Care-Lo is operated by Jamal Ahmed, based in Karachi, Pakistan. In these terms, "Care-Lo", "we" and "us" mean Jamal Ahmed as the operator of the Care-Lo platform, and "you" means anyone who uses it.

We are not a hospital, clinic, Home healthcare agency or emergency service, and we don't employ the healthcare professionals listed on Care-Lo. They are independent and decide for themselves which requests to accept, what care to give and how to give it. When you book someone through Care-Lo, your arrangement is with that healthcare professional, not with us.

2. Agreeing to these terms

By creating an account or using Care-Lo, whether you're logged in or not, you agree to these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.

Some parts of Care-Lo, such as healthcare professional profiles and city pages, can be browsed without creating an account. These terms still apply whenever you use those parts of the platform.

3. Who can use Care-Lo

You need to be at least 18 years old, and able to enter into a binding agreement, to create a Care-Lo account.

You can arrange care for yourself or for someone you love: a child, an elderly parent or someone who is recovering. That's fine, as long as the account belongs to an adult who has the right to make those arrangements, such as a parent, guardian or relative acting with the patient's agreement.

4. Care-Lo does not give medical advice

Nothing on Care-Lo is medical advice. Healthcare professional profiles, city pages and anything our support team tells you are general information to help you find care. They are not a diagnosis, a treatment plan or a replacement for seeing a qualified doctor.

Decisions about treatment should be made with a qualified professional who has assessed the patient. If you're unsure whether Home healthcare is right for someone, speak to their doctor first.

5. Emergencies

Care-Lo is not for emergencies. Healthcare professionals may not see your message or request right away, and nobody is watching the platform around the clock to respond to urgent situations.

If someone needs urgent medical help, call your local emergency number or go to the nearest hospital straight away.

6. Your account

• Give us accurate information about yourself and keep it up to date. That includes your name, phone number and, for healthcare professionals, your qualifications and experience.
• Keep your password to yourself. You're responsible for what happens on your account, so tell us straight away if you think someone else has used it.
• One person, one account. Don't create accounts for other people or pretend to be someone else.
• We may ask you to confirm your email address before you can use some features.

7. If you're looking for care

Choosing a healthcare professional, for yourself or someone you love, is your decision. Before you book, read their profile, check their experience and verification status, look at their reviews, and ask them anything you need to know in chat.

• Describe the patient's needs honestly in your requests and messages, so the healthcare professional can decide whether they can help safely.
• Treat the healthcare professionals who visit your home with respect, and make sure they can work safely there.
• If you can no longer keep a booking, cancel it or let the healthcare professional know as early as you can.

8. If you're a healthcare professional

You are responsible for the care you provide and for the way you provide it. That includes holding any registration or licence your work requires, working within your qualifications and training, and following the professional standards and laws that apply to you.

• Everything on your profile must be true: your name, photo, qualifications, experience, services and service area.
• Documents you upload for verification must be genuine and must belong to you.
• Only accept requests you are qualified and able to handle. If a patient needs more than you can safely provide, say so and point them towards appropriate care.
• Keep what you learn about patients and the people around them private, and use their details only to arrange and provide the care they asked for.
• Turn up when you've agreed to, and let the customer know as early as possible if you can't.

9. What verification means

When a healthcare professional submits documents, we check whether the name, date of birth and photo on their profile appear to match the ID and qualification documents they gave us. If they do, the profile gets a Care-Lo Verified badge.

That check is limited. It doesn't confirm that a licence is valid, that someone is competent or that their care will be good, and a Verified badge is not a recommendation. We may refuse, pause or remove verification at any time, for example if we have reason to doubt a document.

10. Service requests, bookings and payment

A service request is a message from a customer to a healthcare professional asking for a visit at a certain time, for a proposed amount. The healthcare professional can accept or decline it. Once it's accepted, the visit is an agreement between the two of you.

Care-Lo does not currently collect or handle payments for visits. The customer and the healthcare professional agree the fee and pay each other directly. Any refund, missed payment or disagreement about money is between you, though we're happy to help if you contact us.

We recommend keeping your conversations and arrangements in Care-Lo chat and service requests. That record is what we look at if you report a problem, so arrangements made outside Care-Lo are much harder for us to help with.

11. Things you must not do

To keep Care-Lo safe and useful for everyone, you must not:

• give false information, pretend to be someone else, or upload documents that are fake or not yours;
• harass, threaten, abuse or discriminate against anyone you meet through Care-Lo;
• use Care-Lo for anything illegal, or offer services you aren't qualified or allowed to provide;
• post reviews that are fake, paid for, or about a visit that didn't happen;
• send spam or advertising, or collect other users' details for anything other than arranging care;
• try to break into, overload or interfere with the platform, or scrape it with automated tools.

12. Reviews and what you post

Reviews help other people choose, so they should be honest, fair and based on your own experience. You're responsible for what you write in reviews, chats and on your profile.

You keep ownership of what you post. By posting it, you allow Care-Lo to show it on the platform and use it to run and promote the service, for example displaying a review on a healthcare professional's profile. We may remove anything that breaks these terms, is misleading, or shares someone's private or medical information without their permission.

13. Our content

The Care-Lo name, logo, website design and the content we create belong to us. You're welcome to use the platform for its intended purpose, but please don't copy, resell or reuse our content without asking us first.

14. Other services we rely on

Some features use services from other companies, such as maps, email and notifications, and we may link to other websites. We're not responsible for those services or websites, and their own terms apply when you use them.

15. Keeping Care-Lo running

We work hard to keep Care-Lo available and accurate, but we can't promise it will always be available, error-free or up to date. We may change, pause or stop parts of the platform, for example to fix problems or add new features.

Care-Lo is provided "as is". Healthcare professionals' profiles are written by the healthcare professionals themselves, and we can't guarantee that everything on them is correct.

16. Our responsibility to you

Because Care-Lo connects people and does not provide care itself, we're not responsible for the care a healthcare professional gives, for what happens during a visit, or for any injury, loss or damage that comes from an arrangement between a customer and a healthcare professional.

To the extent the law allows, we're also not responsible for indirect losses, such as lost income or data, that result from using Care-Lo. Nothing in these terms limits any responsibility that the law in Pakistan doesn't allow us to limit.

If you break these terms and that leads to a claim against Care-Lo, you agree to cover the costs that result from your actions.

17. Suspending or closing accounts

We may suspend, restrict or close an account, or remove a profile or review, if we believe someone has broken these terms, put another person at risk, or given us false information. Where it's safe and reasonable, we'll tell you why.

You can stop using Care-Lo at any time and ask us to delete your account. Our Privacy Policy explains how.

18. Complaints and disputes

If something goes wrong, whether with a healthcare professional, a customer or Care-Lo itself, please tell us first. We'll look into it and, where we can, help sort it out. That can include removing someone from the platform.

19. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as Care-Lo grows. When we make an important change, we'll publish the updated terms on this page with a new "last updated" date and, where appropriate, let you know by email or on the platform. If you keep using Care-Lo after a change, you're agreeing to the updated terms.

20. How we contact each other

We'll send notices about these terms or your account to the email address on your account, or show them on the platform, so please keep your email address up to date.

You can send notices to us by email at support@care-lo.com.

21. If part of these terms can't be enforced

If a court or authority decides that any part of these terms is invalid or can't be enforced, that part is changed only as much as needed to make it enforceable, and the rest of the terms still apply.

If we don't enforce a part of these terms straight away, we can still enforce it later.

22. The whole agreement

These Terms of Use, together with our Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between you and Care-Lo about using the platform. Any arrangement you make with a healthcare professional or a customer is separate, and is between the two of you.