Privacy Policy

Effective date: September 18, 2026

Hepatica: AI Fatty Liver Companion ("Hepatica" or "the App") is developed and published by Valerii Loveiko. This privacy policy explains what the App stores on your device, what it sends to external services when you use an AI feature, and the choices you have.

1. Data Stored on Your Device

The following records are saved in the App's local storage on your device. Information you choose for an AI feature is also processed by the services described in section 2. A doctor summary you export may contain these records; you control where you share it. Device backups may also contain App data, depending on your Apple settings.

• Lab results you enter by hand or confirm after reading a report: ALT, AST, GGT, ALP, albumin, bilirubin, HbA1c, glucose and platelets, with the unit, reference range and report date you confirm
• FIB-4 screening score, calculated on your device from your age, AST, ALT and platelets. It is a screening aid, not a diagnosis or a fibrosis stage
• Meals: meal photos you choose to save, the dish description, the educational score and notes returned for that meal
• Evening check-ins, weekly goals and your plan (the focus you choose, milestones and saved questions)
• Alcohol records, including alcohol-free days. You can hide alcohol from your progress view and choose whether it is included in the doctor summary
• Medicines you log (name, dose, and whether you took it)
• Weight entries, symptoms (type, severity, optional note) and, if you use it, period start dates
• History of your records, and Coach conversations and saved answers
• Onboarding and profile settings: onboarding answers and the group you self-selected, your age if you enter it, and an optional name you can type in Settings
• App settings: disclaimer and AI consent status, reminder times, theme, a short local cache of recent source-search results (up to 100 entries, kept for up to 30 days), and a local counter that limits how many photo analyses can run per week

Lab report photos and PDFs are not saved in the App; only the values you confirm are saved. Hepatica does not have your records on any server of ours, and the developer cannot access them.

2. Data Sent to External Services

Hepatica connects to the services below only to provide the AI features you use. The App chooses one regional service for each request:

• Mainland China is selected when your Apple App Store storefront is China mainland or your device region is set to mainland China. These requests use our dedicated Alibaba Cloud Function Compute service in the Beijing region and Qwen models through Alibaba Cloud Model Studio in mainland China.
• All other regions use our Cloudflare Worker with OpenAI, DeepSeek and TypeSafe.

The App reads your storefront country and device region on your device to make this choice and remembers the storefront result on the device. The language you use in the App does not select the provider. A failed mainland China request is not redirected to the global service. No third-party AI API keys ship in the App.

2.1 What is sent, feature by feature

• Lab report reading. When you scan a report, the photo is resized on your device to at most 2048 pixels on its longest side and sent as a JPEG image. When you choose a PDF, up to its first three pages are converted to images on your device and sent one page at a time until a page with results is found. This is cloud analysis, not on-device OCR. Lab reports can show your name, date of birth or other identifiers; you may crop or cover them. The values that come back are shown for you to check and correct before anything is saved. You can also type every value yourself and never send a report.
• Meal photo feedback. When you take or choose a meal photo on the scan screen, it is resized to at most 1024 pixels and sent as a JPEG image. The service first checks whether the photo shows food or drink; a photo that is not food is not rated. For food, it returns an educational liver-friendliness score (0 to 100, shown in three bands), what in the meal helps, what to go easy on, and one practical swap. The photo is re-encoded on your device before upload, so embedded photo metadata such as location is not included. The feedback looks at food only; Hepatica does not perform face recognition or biometric analysis.
• AI liver guide (Coach). When you send a question, the request contains your question, up to 20 earlier messages from the same conversation, excerpts retrieved from the bundled source collection, and a short summary of your records: the group you self-selected, your tracking streak, the values, ranges and dates from your two most recent lab panels, a count of meals scored in the last 14 days, and an alcohol summary for the last 14 days. For a focused first-step question, no record summary is added: the request contains the question or meal description you write, any lab values you confirmed for it, the retrieved excerpts and, when you continue that conversation later, its earlier messages. Answers show the sources they were based on.
• Source search. To find relevant passages, the text of your question is sent to create a search embedding. The embedding is compared on your device with the bundled source collection, which was built with the same embedding model for each region. The bundled collection itself never leaves your device.
• Question routing and source ranking (outside mainland China only). Before a question in a conversation is answered, its text and the name of your current plan focus may be sent to TypeSafe to decide whether a ready-made library answer fits, whether a personalised answer is needed, or whether the message may describe an urgent symptom or a crisis. A safety check also runs on your device first. When an answer is prepared, your question and up to 20 candidate source excerpts may be sent to TypeSafe to rank the most relevant excerpts. TypeSafe is not used for mainland China requests.

AI requests do not include your RevenueCat identifier, Apple ID, email address or advertising identifier. They can include the content you submit and the record context described above; share only information needed for the feature. Content is not anonymous merely because no account identifier is attached.

2.2 Mainland China: Qwen through Alibaba Cloud

• Requests go to our Alibaba Cloud Function Compute service in the Beijing region, which forwards them to Alibaba Cloud Model Studio in mainland China.
• Qwen (qwen3.7-plus) reads lab report and meal photos and generates Coach answers. Qwen text-embedding-v4 creates source-search embeddings, which are compared on your device with a bundled source collection built with the same model.
• Model filing: ZheJiang-TongYiQianWen-20230901. Algorithm filing: 网信算备330110507206401230035号.
• Our Alibaba function does not log request or response content. Alibaba Cloud processes content under its service terms.
• Mainland China requests are not sent to Cloudflare, OpenAI, DeepSeek or TypeSafe, including when an error occurs.

2.3 Other regions: Cloudflare, OpenAI, DeepSeek and TypeSafe

• OpenAI image analysis (gpt-4o-mini): reads selected lab report photos and PDF pages, and meal photos, through our Cloudflare Worker after consent. See OpenAI's API data usage policies.
• OpenAI embeddings (text-embedding-3-small): your question is sent through our Worker to create a source-search embedding.
• DeepSeek (deepseek-chat): generates Coach answers from your question, the conversation, the record summary and the retrieved excerpts. The App accepts source identifiers only from the excerpts supplied for that request. Source matching does not guarantee medical accuracy.
• TypeSafe (Jev): routes Coach questions and ranks retrieved excerpts, as described in section 2.1.
• Cloudflare routes these requests. Our Worker does not intentionally persist AI request bodies. Cloudflare processes your connection to our service, and the AI provider receives the proxy connection rather than a direct request from your device.

AI providers process the submitted content under their service terms. AI results may be incomplete or incorrect.

2.4 Subscriptions: Apple and RevenueCat

Hepatica offers a Weekly subscription (with a 7-day free trial for eligible users) and an Annual subscription with no trial. Purchases and billing are handled by Apple; we do not receive your payment details. Subscription status is managed by RevenueCat, which receives:

• A pseudonymous app-user identifier generated by RevenueCat
• Subscription status (for example active or expired)
• Product identifier and the transaction data required to manage the Weekly or Annual subscription

RevenueCat does not receive your lab results, meals, photos, logs or Coach conversations. See RevenueCat's Privacy Policy.

2.5 Apple services

• StoreKit: purchases, subscription management, and the storefront country used for regional routing.
• Reminders: check-in and follow-up reminders are local notifications scheduled on your device. Hepatica does not use push notifications from a server.
• Backups: if device or iCloud backup is enabled, local App data may be included in your backup. This is controlled by your device settings.

Hepatica does not read from or write to Apple Health.

3. Analytics and Tracking

Hepatica does not include advertising networks, cross-app tracking, or third-party analytics SDKs, does not use the advertising identifier (IDFA), and contains no advertisements. Hepatica does not send product analytics or usage events to our own servers; the App keeps a small record of in-app activity on your device only. Apple may separately collect diagnostics according to your device settings under Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements.

4. Information We Do Not Collect

• No account, email address, phone number or login. An optional name you type in Settings stays on your device and is never sent to an AI service; it appears only in a doctor summary you choose to export
• No GPS location or photo location metadata
• No advertising identifier or cross-app tracking identifier
• No contacts, calendar, or browsing history
• No face-recognition templates or other biometric identifiers

5. How We Use Information

Information is used only to provide the App's features: storing and charting your records, reading lab reports you choose, giving educational meal feedback, answering your questions with sources, reminders, the doctor summary, and managing your subscription. We do not use your information for advertising or profiling, and we do not sell it.

6. Doctor Summary

The doctor summary PDF is created on your device from your records. It is shared only when you choose to share it using the iOS share sheet, and you decide where it goes. You can choose whether alcohol records are included.

7. AI Consent and Control

Before you start using Hepatica, you are asked to confirm that you understand it is educational, and to consent to Coach messages, lab report scans and meal photos being sent to our AI partners for processing as described in this policy. Photo analysis and sending a question remain actions you start: a photo is sent only when you take or choose it on a scan screen, a PDF only when you choose it for reading, and a question only when you send it. You can withdraw this consent at any time with “Send photos and messages for AI analysis” under Settings → Data & privacy; with it off, no photos, PDFs or questions are sent to any AI service. You can keep using Hepatica as a manual tracker without sending photos or questions. Avoid including information that is unnecessary for the question or analysis.

8. Security

Local data is kept in the App's private storage and protected by iOS data protection and your device passcode. Network requests use HTTPS (TLS) under Apple's App Transport Security. Third-party AI credentials are kept on our Cloudflare and Alibaba Cloud services, not in the App.

9. Data Retention and Deletion

• On your device: records stay until you delete them. You can delete individual entries, use Settings → Data & privacy → Reset app & delete all data (this also removes saved meal photos, the local source-search cache and scheduled reminders), or delete the App. Deleting the App removes its local records from that installation.
• Separate copies: copies in device backups, doctor summaries you exported, and information previously processed by external services are separate from the App.
• Providers: Apple, RevenueCat, Cloudflare, Alibaba Cloud and the AI providers may retain information according to their policies and applicable obligations.
• Subscriptions: deleting the App or resetting it does not cancel an Apple subscription. Manage or cancel it in iOS Settings → your name → Subscriptions. Refunds are handled by Apple.

For questions about externally processed information or applicable access or deletion requests, contact us using the address below.

10. Your Rights and Regional Compliance

Your privacy rights depend on your location and the applicable law. Content submitted for AI processing and subscription identifiers can be personal information, and health information may be treated as sensitive personal information.

• EU/EEA and UK (GDPR, UK GDPR): health information sent for AI processing is processed on the basis of your explicit consent, which you can withdraw at any time in Settings → Data & privacy. Local records stay on your device under your control. You may ask about access, correction, deletion, restriction, objection or portability, and you may complain to your data-protection authority.
• California (CCPA/CPRA): we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.
• Mainland China (PIPL): information for mainland China users is processed by our Alibaba Cloud service and Qwen in mainland China, as described in section 2.2, and is not redirected to services outside mainland China.
• Canada (PIPEDA) and other jurisdictions: the same practices apply: collection limited to the features you use, local storage, no advertising or tracking.

To ask about access, correction, deletion or other rights relating to information we process, contact us at the address below.

11. Children's Privacy

Hepatica is rated 12+ on the App Store and is intended for adults managing their own liver health. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

12. Medical Disclaimer

Hepatica is an educational wellness companion, not a medical device. It does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition. Lab explanations, FIB-4 scores, meal feedback and Coach answers are educational information and self-reported tracking, not clinical assessments. Always consult your doctor or hepatologist. See the full Medical Disclaimer.

13. Changes to This Policy

If we update this privacy policy, the revised version will be posted on this page with an updated effective date. Check this page for the current policy.

14. Contact Us

For questions about this privacy policy or your data:

• Developer: Valerii Loveiko
• Email: sergejkar@gmail.com
• Support: love8ko.github.io/hepatica/support.html

Medical Disclaimer · Terms of Use · Support