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Privacy Policy

Updated 25 Sep 2026
This Policy should be read in conjunction with the Terms of Use, into which it is incorporated by reference.

1. The Information We Collect

The type of information we collect depends on your relationship with us — for example, whether you are a patient, a prospective patient making an enquiry, or simply browsing our Website.

Personal information

  • your name, date of birth, address and contact details;
  • emergency contact details;
  • Medicare, Department of Veterans’ Affairs and private health fund details, where applicable; and
  • billing and payment information.

Health information

Health information is treated as sensitive information and receives a higher level of protection under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). It includes:

  • your medical and dental history, including conditions, allergies and medications;
  • clinical notes, treatment plans, X-rays and clinical photographs;
  • records of examinations, treatment and referrals; and
  • information provided by other health practitioners involved in your care.

Website and technical information

  • your IP address, device and browser type, and general location;
  • the pages you visit and how you interact with our Website; and
  • limited information about your interaction with our online booking tool, as explained in Section 10.

2. How We Collect Your Information

We usually collect information directly from you — in person, over the phone, by email, through our online booking system, or during your consultation, including through the AI-assisted tools described in Section 7.

We may also collect information about you from other sources, including:

  • other health practitioners who refer you to us, or to whom we refer you;
  • your health fund, Medicare or the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, where applicable, for billing and claims purposes; and
  • your Website activity through cookies and similar technologies, as described in Section 10.

Where practicable, we will let you know when we collect information about you from someone other than you.

3. How We Use Your Information

We collect, hold and use your information primarily to provide you with dental care, including to:

  • assess, diagnose, plan and provide your treatment;
  • maintain accurate and complete clinical records;
  • schedule and manage your appointments, and send appointment reminders and recall notices;
  • process payments and, where applicable, make claims to your health fund, Medicare or the Department of Veterans’ Affairs; and
  • communicate with you about your care.

We may also use your information for related purposes you would reasonably expect, including to:

  • manage and improve our practice and services;
  • meet our professional, legal, accounting and regulatory obligations;
  • respond to feedback, complaints and enquiries; and
  • protect the safety, rights and property of our patients, staff and practice.

With your consent, we may also use your information to send you marketing communications, as described in Section 11, or to use your photos, videos or story for promotional purposes, as described in Section 12.

We do not sell personal or health information.

4. Who We Share Your Information With

We only share your information where it is necessary to provide your care, to run our practice, or as required or authorised by law. This may include sharing information with:

  • dentists, hygienists and other clinicians within Beyond Dental Care involved in your treatment;
  • other health practitioners involved in your care, such as specialists, your GP, or practitioners you are referred to or from;
  • dental laboratories, radiology and imaging providers, orthodontic or aligner providers, and other organisations involved in providing or supporting your treatment;
  • your health fund, Medicare or the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, where applicable, to process claims and payments;
  • payment-plan or treatment-funding providers where you ask us to assist with an enquiry or application and authorise us to provide relevant information;
  • service providers who support our practice, such as our practice-management and online-booking provider, communications providers, AI-assisted clinical documentation provider, online oral-health tool provider, IT and hosting providers, and professional advisers;
  • regulators and government bodies, such as the Dental Board of Australia, AHPRA or the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, where required or authorised by law; and
  • a prospective buyer or their advisers if we sell or transfer all or part of our practice, subject to appropriate confidentiality protections.

Where we share information with a service provider, we limit the information disclosed to what is reasonably necessary for the relevant purpose and take reasonable steps appropriate to the circumstances to protect your information.

5. Your Dental and Health Records

The clinical information we collect about you — including your history, notes, X-rays, images and any care plans — forms part of your dental record. We take reasonable steps to keep this record accurate, complete and up to date, and we encourage you to let us know if any of your details change.

We retain dental records in accordance with applicable legal, professional and clinical record-keeping requirements. As a general practice, adult dental records are retained for at least seven years from the date of the last entry, and records relating to children are retained for an appropriate longer period. We may retain records for longer where required by law or where reasonably necessary for clinical, regulatory, insurance or legal purposes. After the applicable retention period, records are securely destroyed or de-identified where appropriate.

You can request access to, or correction of, your dental record at any time — see Section 16.

6. Appointments and Online Bookings

You can book an appointment with us online, by phone or in person. Our online booking tool is provided by our practice-management software provider, Principle, and is embedded on our Website. When you make a booking online, the details you provide are submitted through Principle and made available to your chosen clinic so that we can schedule and manage your appointment.

We may contact you by phone, SMS or email about your upcoming appointments, to send reminders or recall notices, or to follow up on your treatment or account. These are administrative communications relating to your care and are separate from the marketing communications described in Section 11.

We use Podium for website chat, SMS communications, patient enquiries and review-related communications, and Microsoft 365 / Outlook for email communications.

7. AI-Assisted Consultation Tools

Beyond Dental Care uses secure AI-assisted tool called CoTreat during some appointments. This helps us keep accurate records and give you clear, personalised information after your visit.

What we collect:

  • An audio recording of your consultation
  • A written transcript made from that recording
  • For some cosmetic consultations, photos of your face and teeth used to create a digital smile design that is shared with you only

How we may use it:

  • To prepare a draft of your clinical notes
  • To create your personalised care plan, which may include:
    • Details of your recommended treatment
    • Educational information about your oral health and treatment options
    • Costs and payment options for your treatment
    • A digital smile design showing a simulated result, where relevant
  • Your registered dental practitioner reviews and approves all clinical notes and care plans
  • The AI does not diagnose or make treatment decisions. All clinical decisions are made by your dentist
  • Smile designs are illustrations to help you visualise options. They are not a guarantee of results
  • We do not use your recordings, transcripts or photos for marketing, unless expressly requested with signed written consent given

Storage and security

  • All information is stored and processed in Australia
  • It is held securely as part of your health record, as per requirements
  • It is never used to train or improve AI products

How long we keep it

  • Recordings, transcripts, notes, care plans and images form part of your health record
  • They are kept for the period required under Australian health records and privacy laws, then securely destroyed

Your choices

  • You can say no to us using CoTreat or change your mind at any time, including partway through an appointment
  • Saying no will not affect your care. Notes will be taken manually, and we can still give you treatment and cost information in another format
  • You can ask to access your records, including recordings, in line with our access process

Questions

8. Automated Decision-Making

Beyond Dental Care does not use automated systems to make decisions about your treatment. Tools such as CoTreat may assist your dentist by drafting notes or a proposed care plan, but every recommendation, diagnosis and clinical decision is made and approved by your registered dental practitioner before it is provided to you or acted on.

9. Smilo – Online Oral Health and Smile Visualisation Tool

Our Website includes an optional Smilo tool for AI-assisted oral-health screening and smile visualisation. If you choose to use Smilo, it may collect personal information, sensitive information and health information, including contact details and photographs of your teeth, gums and oral structures.

Information submitted through Smilo is handled in accordance with Smilo’s own privacy and consent arrangements and may be shared with Beyond Dental Care for purposes such as pre-screening, arranging a consultation and providing care. Smilo does not replace a clinical examination, diagnosis, treatment or advice from a registered dental practitioner.

This is separate from the in-clinic digital smile design that may be created using CoTreat during a cosmetic consultation, which is described in Section 7 and forms part of your health record.

For more information, see the Smilo Privacy Policy, Consent Form and Terms and Conditions.

10. Our Website: Cookies, Analytics and Advertising

Our Website uses cookies, tags, pixels and similar technologies, managed through Google Tag Manager, to understand how the Website is used and to measure the performance of our advertising.

We use Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads conversion measurement and Meta Pixel. These technologies may collect information such as your IP address, browser and device information, page URLs and referrers, dates and times of visits, cookies or similar identifiers, and selected Website interaction or conversion events.

Our analytics and advertising technologies are not configured to receive the personal or health information you enter inside the embedded Principle booking interface. We may measure limited events associated with the booking process, such as whether a booking was started or completed.

Information you enter into Principle is submitted through Principle and made available to Beyond Dental Care for the purpose of arranging and managing your appointment. The Website analytics and advertising tools described above do not receive the contents of those booking fields through our Website tags.

Our analytics and advertising tags are also not configured to receive the information or images you submit inside the embedded Smilo interface. They may, however, record information associated with your visit to the Website page on which the Smilo tool appears.

We do not use our clinical patient records or treatment history to create advertising audiences or to retarget individual patients.

We do not operate a general contact form on our Website. If you email us using an email link on the Website, the email is sent from your own email service and handled as ordinary correspondence.

You can manage or disable cookies through your browser or device settings and through privacy or advertising controls provided by the relevant technology providers. Restricting cookies may affect some Website functionality or the accuracy of our analytics.

11. Marketing Communications

With your consent, or where otherwise permitted by law, we may send you information about our services, special offers or oral-health education by email or SMS. We use Mailchimp for some email marketing communications.

You can opt out of marketing communications at any time by using the unsubscribe link in our emails, replying “STOP” to an SMS where that option is available, or contacting us directly.

Appointment reminders, recall notices and other communications about your care are administrative communications rather than marketing communications and may continue as part of providing your treatment.

We do not use health information for direct marketing unless we have the consent required by law.

12. Photography, Video and Testimonials

We may ask for your separate, express consent to use clinical photographs, videos or your story as a testimonial for promotional purposes, such as on our Website or social media. We will not use identifiable patient photographs, videos or testimonials for promotional purposes without the relevant consent.

You may withdraw consent for future use by contacting us, noting that it may not always be possible to remove material that has already been published, redistributed or shared by others.

This is separate from clinical photographs taken as part of your treatment, which form part of your health record as described in Section 5.

13. Payments, Health Funds and Treatment Funding

We collect and use information that is reasonably necessary to process payments and, where applicable, health fund, Medicare or Department of Veterans’ Affairs claims.

Beyond Dental Care does not currently collect card payment details through the public Website. Payments are processed through our clinics and the payment systems used by the practice.

Where you make a private health insurance claim through HICAPS, information necessary to process the claim may be provided to HICAPS and the relevant health fund.

We also provide information about third-party payment plans and treatment-funding options, including superannuation-access services. You may contact those providers directly, or you may ask us to assist you. Where you authorise us to do so, we may provide relevant information such as your contact details, treatment information or treatment estimate to the provider for the purpose of your enquiry or application.

Third-party payment, finance and treatment-funding providers operate under their own eligibility requirements, terms and privacy policies.

14. Overseas Storage, Processing and Disclosure

Some of the systems we use store and process information in Australia. Other service providers operate internationally and may store, access or process personal information outside Australia.

Depending on the service used, overseas processing may occur in the United States and in other countries where our service providers, their related companies or their subprocessors operate. This may apply, for example, to services supplied by Podium, Mailchimp, Google, Meta and Microsoft.

Clinical information handled through CoTreat is stored and processed in Australia as described in Section 7.

Where we disclose personal information overseas, we take reasonable steps appropriate to the circumstances to ensure that the information is handled consistently with applicable Australian privacy requirements, unless an exception under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) applies.

The countries and processing locations used by technology providers may change over time. We may update this Policy where a change materially affects how personal information is handled.

15. How We Protect and Retain Your Information

We take reasonable steps to protect the personal and health information we hold from misuse, interference, loss, and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. These steps may include restricting access to staff and contractors who need information to perform their work, using access controls and passwords, maintaining appropriate physical and technical safeguards, and selecting service providers with appropriate information-security measures.

We retain information only for as long as it is needed for the purpose for which it was collected, or as required or permitted by law. Section 5 explains our approach to dental record retention. When information is no longer required, we take reasonable steps to securely destroy or de-identify it where appropriate.

No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, and while we take reasonable steps to protect information, absolute security cannot be guaranteed.

16. Accessing and Correcting Your Information

You can ask us for access to the personal and health information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it if it is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading. To make a request, contact us using the details in Section 20.

We will respond to your request within a reasonable time. We may need to verify your identity before releasing information. We do not charge you for making an access request, although we may charge a reasonable fee for the cost of providing access or copies where permitted by law.

In limited circumstances permitted under the Privacy Act — for example, where access would pose a serious threat to the life, health or safety of an individual or to public health or safety — we may need to refuse or limit access. If this occurs, we will provide the reasons for the decision where required and permitted by law.

17. Children and Young People

We provide dental care to patients of all ages, including children. Where a child is not yet mature enough to make their own decisions about their information, we will generally collect information from, and communicate with, a parent or guardian on their behalf, and that parent or guardian may exercise privacy rights such as access or correction for the child where appropriate.

As a young patient matures, they may be able to make their own decisions about their health information, depending on their capacity and understanding of what is involved. We do not knowingly use children’s health information for direct marketing without the consent required by law.

18. Data Breaches

If we experience a data breach that is likely to result in serious harm to you and meets the requirements of an eligible data breach under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, we will notify affected individuals and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) as soon as practicable, as required by law. We will also take reasonable steps to contain the incident and reduce the risk of harm.

19. Privacy Complaints

If you have a concern about how we have handled your personal or health information, please contact us using the details in Section 20. We will investigate your complaint and aim to respond within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may be able to make a complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

20. Contact Us and Changes to This Policy

If you have questions about this Policy, or want to access or correct your information, make a complaint, or exercise any other right described here, please contact our Privacy Officer:

Email: digital@beyonddentalcare.com.au

You can also contact your Beyond Dental Care clinic directly:

For questions specifically about CoTreat, you can also contact the Practice Manager at your clinic, as listed in Section 7.

We may update this Policy from time to time. The current version, with its last updated date, will be available on our Website.