Terms of Service

1. About these terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Sharpen ("we", "us"), governing your access to and use of the Sharpen platform, including the website, virtual standardized patient sessions, evaluation tools, and related services (together, the "Service").

By creating an account, using the Service, or agreeing to these Terms during sign-up, you confirm that you have read and accept them. If you do not accept them, do not use the Service.

If you access the Service through a school, hospital, or other institution, additional terms may apply under our agreement with that institution. Where those terms conflict with these, the institutional agreement governs.

2. Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into a contract to use the Service. Accounts are for a single named individual and may not be shared.

You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you provide, for keeping your credentials confidential, and for activity that occurs under your account. Tell us promptly at hello@sharpenedu.com if you believe your account has been accessed without your authorisation.

3. Institutional access and visibility of your work

Where your account is provided by an institution, that institution administers it. Its designated administrators and educators can, depending on their role, see the cases assigned to you, the sessions you complete, your evaluation results, and the recordings and transcripts of those sessions.

This is the intended purpose of the Service: it exists so that educators can assess and support clinical skill development. If you do not want your institution to have that visibility, do not use the Service.

An institution may add, suspend, or remove accounts, and may reassign or withdraw access to cases and teams, at its discretion.

4. Educational purpose only — no clinical reliance

The Service simulates patient encounters for training and assessment. It is not a medical device, does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and must not be used to make decisions about the care of any real person.

Simulated patients are generated by artificial intelligence and may produce information that is inaccurate, incomplete, or clinically implausible. Evaluations, scores, and feedback are produced in part by automated systems and are intended to supplement — never replace — assessment and supervision by qualified educators.

Completing sessions on the Service does not constitute certification, licensure, accreditation, or any assessment of fitness to practise.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• enter real patient information, personal health information, or other confidential third-party data into a session, a case, or any field of the Service
• attempt to access accounts, organisations, teams, sessions, or evaluations that have not been assigned to you
• probe, scan, or test the security of the Service, or circumvent any access control, rate limit, or verification measure
• copy, scrape, resell, or redistribute cases, rubrics, prompts, or evaluation content
• use the Service to harass any person, or to generate unlawful, defamatory, or discriminatory content
• use automated means to create accounts, submit forms, or run sessions
• reverse engineer the Service or use it to develop a competing product

We may investigate suspected breaches and may suspend access while we do so.

6. Your content and session data

A session produces an audio recording, a transcript, and an evaluation. You retain any rights you already hold in what you say and submit. You grant us a licence to host, process, transmit, and analyse that material as necessary to operate the Service, produce evaluations, and make results available to you and to your institution.

We may use aggregated and de-identified information, from which you cannot reasonably be re-identified, to improve the Service.

How this material is handled is described in our Privacy Policy.

7. Our intellectual property

The Service, including its software, interface, clinical cases, rubrics, prompts, and the Sharpen name and marks, is owned by us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual property law. These Terms grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to use the Service for its intended educational purpose, and nothing more.

8. Third-party services

The Service depends on third-party services, including AI services for voice conversation and automated evaluation, and providers of hosting, storage, and email. Their availability and performance are outside our control, and interruptions to them may interrupt the Service. The categories of provider we rely on are described in our Privacy Policy.

9. Availability and changes to the Service

We may change, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service, and may perform maintenance that makes it temporarily unavailable. We aim to give reasonable notice of material changes where we can, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted availability. Some features may be offered as previews and may be changed or withdrawn without notice.

10. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Service at any time and may ask us to close your account. We may suspend or terminate access if you breach these Terms, if your institution withdraws your access, if required by law, or if continued access poses a risk to the Service or to others.

After termination we handle data associated with your account in accordance with our Privacy Policy and any applicable institutional agreement. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination — including intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, and governing law — do survive.

11. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, or uninterrupted operation.

We do not warrant that simulated patients, evaluations, scores, or feedback are accurate, complete, or suitable for any particular purpose.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or academic or professional opportunity, arising out of or relating to the Service, on any theory of liability.

Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the amount paid to us for the Service in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

13. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless against claims, losses, and reasonable legal costs arising from your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the Service, or your entry of real patient or confidential third-party information into the Service.

14. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make a material change we will update the date at the top of this page and take reasonable steps to notify you, such as by email or an in-product notice. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.

15. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable there, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. The courts of Ontario have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, and you consent to that jurisdiction.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms can be sent to hello@sharpenedu.com.