Question 1

Is an AI receptionist PHIPA compliant?

Accepted Answer

That question does not have a yes or no answer, and any vendor who gives you one is overselling. PHIPA does not certify software — there is no certification regime to pass, and the same is true of PIPEDA. What the law does is place obligations on your clinic as the health information custodian, and on anyone acting as your agent. So the real question is whether a vendor is built to let you meet your obligations: does it keep records in Canada, isolate your clinic from every other clinic, limit and log staff access, and put its safeguard and breach-notification undertakings in writing. We do not use your conversations to train AI, and the AI providers that talk with your patients are contractually prohibited from training on your data. gema is built to PHIPA and PIPEDA on all of those, and the undertakings are in our Terms of Service where you can read them before you sign anything.

Question 2

Do you claim to be PIPEDA certified?

Accepted Answer

No, because no such certification exists. Any vendor advertising one is describing something the Office of the Privacy Commissioner does not issue. What we can show you is specific: where records are stored, who on our side can reach them and under what conditions, what gets logged, and how quickly you are told if something goes wrong. We do not use your conversations to train AI, and the AI providers that talk with your patients are contractually prohibited from training on your data.

Question 3

How do you handle PHIPA and PIPEDA?

Accepted Answer

PHIPA is Ontario’s health-privacy law and PIPEDA is the federal privacy law, and gema is built to both. Your clinic stays the health information custodian — you decide what is collected and who sees it. We act as your agent under PHIPA: we hold and move information only on your instructions, never for our own purposes, and every clinic’s records are isolated from every other clinic on the platform. The safeguard, breach-notification, access-control and audit undertakings we give you are set out in writing in our Terms of Service, so there is nothing separate to negotiate or sign.

Question 4

Where is patient data stored, and who can see it?

Accepted Answer

Your records are stored in Canada, encrypted in transit and at rest. Some processing — the phone network, application hosting, speech and language AI, email delivery — happens outside Canada as calls and messages are handled and as your team works in gema. Support access by our staff is role-limited, requires a stated reason, is time-limited and is session-recorded. Opening a patient record in our internal tools, revealing a masked phone number or email, and every export or deletion are written to an append-only log, and you can read that accounting back from your dashboard.

Question 5

Is patient data used to train AI?

Accepted Answer

We do not train AI models, and the AI providers that talk with your patients are contractually prohibited from training on your data. We hold those signed agreements on file. If there is ever a breach affecting your patients we notify you within 72 hours so you can meet your own PHIPA obligations, and we keep breach records for seven years.

Question 6

Does gema handle insurance, WSIB or ICBC claims?

Accepted Answer

No. gema does not verify coverage, count approved visits, submit claims or collect co-pays, for any insurer or provincial body. It answers the questions your callers ask about those things — whether you direct-bill, what to bring, who to ask for — from answers you give it, and routes anything beyond that to your team. Your claims workflow does not change.

Question 7

Do you support clinics outside Ontario?

Accepted Answer

Yes. gema works for clinics anywhere in Canada, and PIPEDA applies federally. PHIPA is Ontario’s statute specifically, and the equivalent provincial health-privacy laws differ — tell us where you operate and we will walk through what applies to you rather than guessing on your behalf.

Built here, for the way clinics here actually run.

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Records stored in Canada

Priced in Canadian dollars

Built to PHIPA and PIPEDA

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