Not an emergency service
BK ClinicQ also does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Nothing in the application is a substitute for the judgement of a healthcare professional. If your condition changes while you are waiting, tell a staff member at the clinic.
Project status
Who these terms are between
These terms are an agreement between you and the operator of this BK ClinicQ deployment. They cover your use of the application, the USSD and WhatsApp channels, the self-service kiosk and this website.
They are not an agreement about your healthcare. Your care is provided by the clinic, on the clinic's terms and under its professional and legal duties. BK ClinicQ carries your place in its queue; it does not treat you, and it does not decide who the clinic sees or in what order beyond running the order the clinic configures.
By using the service you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use it.
What the service does
- Helps you find clinics near you, with their sector, opening status and current queue length.
- Lets you take a place in a clinic's queue: from the app, over USSD, on WhatsApp, on the web, at the kiosk, or at reception.
- Shows you your position and an estimated wait, and notifies you as your turn approaches.
- Shows your ticket number on the clinic's waiting-room screen, and your name only where you have consented and the clinic has enabled it.
- Gives the clinic a dashboard to run the queue, and reports on how it performed.
A place in a queue is not an appointment, and it is not a promise that you will be seen. A clinic may close early, run out of capacity, or reprioritise for clinical reasons.
Queue positions and estimates
Waiting times shown in the application are estimates, calculated from how quickly the clinic is currently working. They will change, sometimes sharply. Clinical need comes first: staff can and will move a patient ahead of you, and each such override is recorded with a reason.
Do not rely on an estimate for anything that would harm you if it were wrong. Give yourself margin, and follow whatever the clinic tells you in person over what the application shows.
Your account
- Give accurate details, and keep your mobile number and email address current; that is how we reach you when it is your turn.
- You are responsible for what happens under your account, and for keeping your password, one-time codes and two-factor device secure.
- Do not share your account or let someone else use it. Tell the operator promptly if you think it has been used without your permission.
- If you register on a shared or borrowed phone, sign out when you are done.
Booking for someone else
You may join a queue on behalf of a dependant: a child, or an adult who has asked you to. When you do, you confirm that you are entitled to act for that person and to give the consents the service records. For a child, that means you are the parent, guardian or other competent person. You can revoke a proxy arrangement at any time, and so can the person you booked for.
Acceptable use
Do not:
- Take places in queues you do not intend to use, or take multiple places for the same visit.
- Impersonate another person, or join a queue for someone who has not asked you to.
- Try to reach records, clinics or accounts you have not been granted access to, or probe, scan or test the service's security without written permission.
- Interfere with the service or its infrastructure, including automated scraping, flooding the messaging channels, or anything that degrades it for others.
- Use the service to break the law, to harass anyone, or to send unsolicited messages.
Security researchers are welcome: report a vulnerability to the operator rather than exploiting it, and give us a reasonable chance to fix it before disclosing it.
Messages and charges
The service is free for patients to use. Your mobile network's own charges still apply: USSD session fees, data, and any charges for messages you send. We do not control those and we cannot refund them.
Messages depend on networks and third-party providers, so delivery cannot be guaranteed. Do not treat the absence of a message as confirmation that it is not yet your turn. You can change which messages you receive, or turn them off, in your notification preferences; essential service messages about your current ticket may still be sent.
Terms for clinics
If your clinic uses BK ClinicQ, it additionally agrees that it will:
- Give accurate clinic details (hours, closures, services and location) and keep them current, since patients travel on them.
- Use the queue fairly, and record a reason for every priority override.
- Keep the waiting-room display in number-only mode unless it has recorded each affected patient's consent to show more.
- Give each staff member only the access their role requires, and remove access when they leave.
- Remain the responsible party for its patients' personal information under POPIA, and use BK ClinicQ as its operator under a written agreement; see the privacy notice.
- Not use the service, or its reports, in a way that discriminates against patients or misrepresents its waiting times.
Personal information
How we collect, use, share, protect and delete personal information, and the rights you have under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013, is set out in the privacy notice, which forms part of these terms. In short: every clinic starts number-only, names on the screen require your consent, the reason for your visit is never displayed and is purged automatically, and you can ask what we hold and have it deleted.
Availability
We aim to keep the service running, but it is provided as it stands. It may be unavailable for planned maintenance, or because of a fault, a network failure, or a power interruption. The clinic's own paper fallback continues to work when the service does not, and the waiting-room screen recovers on its own once power returns.
We may change, add or withdraw features. If a change materially reduces what the service does for you, we will tell you in the application before it takes effect.
Liability
Nothing in these terms limits or excludes any liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded (including under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008) or any liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.
Subject to that, and to the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for loss you suffer because a wait estimate was inaccurate, a notification was late or never arrived, the service was unavailable, or a clinic's published details were wrong. We are not responsible for the care a clinic provides, for a clinic's decisions about who it sees and when, or for the acts of the mobile networks and messaging providers the service depends on.
Suspension and ending access
You may stop using the service at any time, and you may ask for your account to be deleted; see the privacy notice for what happens to your information when you do.
We may suspend or end access to an account that breaches these terms, that puts the service or its users at risk, or that we are required by law to suspend. Where it is reasonable to do so we will tell you first and give you a chance to put it right.
Changes to these terms
When these terms change, we update the date at the top of this page. A change that materially affects your rights is announced in the application before it takes effect; continuing to use the service after that means you accept the updated terms.
Governing law and disputes
These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa, and the South African courts have jurisdiction. Please raise a complaint with us first; most are resolved quickly. Nothing here prevents you from approaching the Information Regulator about personal information, a consumer body about a consumer complaint, or a court.
Supplier information
Section 43 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 requires a supplier offering goods or services over an electronic transaction to publish its details. For this deployment:
- Service
- BK ClinicQ: clinic discovery and digital queue management
- Provided by
- A BSc IT capstone project team, Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology (Distance Learning), South Africa
- Registration and physical address
- Published here before the service is offered commercially.
- Contact
- The operator of this deployment. Deployment-specific contact details are published here before go-live.