Our privacy policy

AceOSCE is a practice app for medical exams and interviews, at app.cresmd.co. It is run by CresMD, an independent Canadian medical education business based in Calgary, Alberta, led by Dr. Cres.

Our privacy officer is Dr. Cres, the founder of CresMD. This is the person responsible for how we handle your personal information, and the person in charge of the protection of personal information under Quebec law. You can reach them at hello@cresmd.co, or by mail at CresMD, 530 3rd Street SE, Calgary, Alberta T2G 2L8.

This policy covers the AceOSCE app only. Our course at www.cresmd.co runs on Thinkific and has its own privacy policy on that site.

We follow Canada's federal privacy law (PIPEDA), Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), and, for people in Quebec, Quebec's private sector privacy law as updated by Law 25. We do not sell your personal information.

We only collect what we need to run the app. Here is each kind of information, why we need it, and how long we keep it.

When you speak during a station or interview, your browser records a short clip of your voice. That clip goes through our server to ElevenLabs, which turns it into text and sends the text back. We do not save the sound file. We keep only the text.

The text of the conversation is sent to Anthropic, whose AI model Claude plays the patient, examiner or interviewer and marks your performance. We do not send your name or email with it.

If you add your CV or personal statement for interview practice, the document is sent to Anthropic once so that Claude can read it and write the panel's questions. Your CV may contain your name and contact details, so remove them first if you prefer. We do not keep the document.

Your marks are produced automatically by that AI, with checks of our own that stop it passing you against its own scoresheet. They are practice feedback and decide nothing outside the app. If you think a mark is wrong, use Report a problem and a person will look at it. An educator in a class you joined can also add their own feedback.

In video mode, the patient's face comes from Anam. Anam receives only the patient's computer voice so the face can move in time with it. Your microphone is not sent to Anam.

In Casper practice, the app may turn on your camera so you can see yourself, like on the real test. The video stays on your device. It is never recorded or sent to us.

We keep the written transcript and your marks for as long as your account is open, so you can look back at your progress. They are deleted when you delete your account. The practice cases are made up, so please do not share real patient information during practice.

Payments are handled by Stripe. You type your card details on Stripe's secure page, not ours, so we never see or store your full card number. We receive your email, what you bought, the amount, and whether the payment went through. Coaches who are paid through the app set up their payout account directly with Stripe.

We use these companies to run the app. Each one gets only what it needs to do its job, and must protect it.

Thinkific, which runs our course site, sends us your order details when you buy a bundle there that includes the app.

• The CresMD team, to support you, answer messages and handle refunds.
• The CresMD team, when you report a problem with a question in the question bank. They read your report, including your message and your email address, to fix the question.
• Educators in a class you joined. If your school or program enrolled you in a class on AceOSCE, its educators can see your attempts, transcripts and marks, and leave feedback.
• Your coach, if you book a session. The coach sees your first name, your topic and the note you write. If a coach referred you, that coach is told your name once you finish your first session.
• Other visitors, on the activity board. It shows the first name and estimated country of people who practice, and how many stations they did. It never shows your full name or email.
• Other candidates in the question bank, as figures only. Your first answer to each question is pooled with other candidates' first answers, without your name, to show what share of candidates chose each answer and what share got it right. These figures appear only once enough candidates have answered. Each question also shows a difficulty level from the start: our own estimate until enough candidates have answered it, then the level measured from their first answers. Answers given by CresMD staff are never counted. Other candidates never see your own answers. When you delete your account, your answers leave these figures.
• The CresMD team, as figures only, in the question bank's review tools: how many first answers a question has, how many of them were right, and the difficulty they measure, to find a question whose answer key may be wrong, that may give its answer away, or whose difficulty level we may have set wrong. These figures never say who answered.
• Anyone, for a review you chose to make public.
• Authorities, only when the law requires it.

If CresMD is ever sold or merged, your information could move to the new owner, who would have to protect it the same way.

We use a few small cookies and browser storage that the app needs to work: one keeps you signed in for up to 30 days, others remember your language, the product you are using, your voice settings and your answer to the analytics banner. In the question bank, your browser also remembers the text size you chose, whether you hid the answer statistics, and the options you struck out in your most recent sessions. These stay in your browser, and the app never sends them to us.

We may use PostHog to understand how people use the app. When it is on, a banner asks you first. Until you say yes, and if you say no, visits are only counted anonymously, with no cookies. If you say yes, PostHog can set cookies, link visits to your account number and plan, and record how you move through the app. Anything you type is hidden in those recordings, and when you are signed in every word on the screen is hidden too. CresMD staff are never identified in it.

You can change your answer at any time with the Privacy choices link at the bottom of every page.

This section applies only once we switch advertising tools on. Today the app does not use them. We will update this page before we do.

• Meta Pixel and Conversions API. These tell Meta (Facebook and Instagram) that someone who saw our ad visited the app, signed up or bought, so we can measure our ads and show them to people likely to find them useful. Google has similar tools that we may also use.
• Customer list matching. We may upload a list of customer email addresses to Meta or Google, scrambled (hashed) before it leaves our system. They use it to find matching accounts, to avoid showing you ads for something you already bought, or to find people with similar interests. They do not keep the list for other uses.
• Lead forms. If you fill in one of our forms inside Facebook or Instagram, we receive what you entered there.

Advertising cookies will only load after you agree in our banner. To keep your email out of customer lists, write to hello@cresmd.co. You can also control ads in your Facebook, Instagram and Google ad settings.

We send emails you need to use the app: confirming your address, password links, receipts, access codes, and messages about your account. These are part of the service, so you cannot turn them off while your account is open.

We also send a few other emails linked to your account: reminders before your access ends, reminders about a coaching session you booked, messages from an educator in your class, and, once your access has ended, one request for a review. We never sell or share your email address for anyone else's marketing, and the app does not add you to any newsletter. If you would rather not receive these emails, write to hello@cresmd.co.

• Your account and practice history: until you delete your account.
• Your question bank sessions, answers, flags and problem reports: until you delete your account. They are deleted with it, and your answers leave the figures other candidates see.
• If you review questions for us: each question review you sign keeps your verdict, your notes and the time you spent on it, with your name, or your email address if your account has no name, and each problem report you resolve keeps your name the same way. These stay even after your account is deleted, as our record of who checked each question and each report, and of how long reviewing takes.
• Payment, refund and tax records: at least six years, as tax law requires. When you delete your account, these records stay but are no longer linked to it.
• Reviews: until you ask us to remove them.
• Copies in our hosting provider's backups and logs: deleted as they are replaced over time.

• See your information. Ask us for a copy of what we hold about you.
• Fix it. Ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
• Take it with you. Ask for your information in a common format you can use elsewhere.
• Change your mind. Withdraw your consent, for example to analytics or to marketing emails. Some uses, like the ones the app needs to work, cannot be stopped without closing your account.
• Delete your account. You can do this yourself: on your account page, choose Close my account. It removes your practice history right away and cannot be undone.

For anything else, email hello@cresmd.co from the address on your account. We answer within 30 days, or tell you if we need more time and why.

If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca), the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta (oipc.ab.ca), or, if you live in Quebec, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec (cai.gouv.qc.ca).

AceOSCE is made for medical students, doctors, and people applying to medical school. If you are under the age of majority where you live (18 or 19, depending on your province), you need a parent or guardian's permission to use it. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13 (under 14 in Quebec). If you think a child has given us information, tell us and we will delete it.

Several of our providers are based outside Canada, mostly in the United States, and one in the European Union. Your information may be stored or processed there. While it is there, the courts, police and national security agencies of that country may be able to get it under their laws. Before using a provider outside Canada or Quebec, we check that it protects information adequately.

We protect your information with encrypted connections (HTTPS), hashed passwords, sign-in links that expire, extra encryption for coaches' Social Insurance Numbers, and access limited to the people who need it. No system is perfectly safe. If a breach puts you at real risk of harm, we will tell you and the privacy commissioner, as the law requires.

When we change this policy, we update the date at the top of this page. If the change is important, we will also tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect.