Terms of Service
These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your access to and use of Spinal (the “Service”), a private professional network for spine surgeons and adjacent clinicians and researchers, available at spinal.science and through our iOS and Android applications. The Service is operated by SPINE DAO, an association (Verein) organized under Articles 60 et seq. of the Swiss Civil Code (ZGB), with registered office at c/o MJP Partners AG, Bahnhofstrasse 20, 6300 Zug, Switzerland (“SPINE DAO,” “we,” “our,” or “us”). SPINE DAO is a non-profit association whose stated purpose is to fund impactful spine-care research that benefits patients and drives industry innovation. By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms.
1. Eligibility
You must be at least 18 years old. The Service is intended for licensed medical professionals, researchers, and credentialed industry participants. Some areas require manual verification of professional credentials before access is granted. We may decline or revoke verification at our discretion.
2. Your account
- You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you provide and for keeping your credentials secure.
- You may not share your account, impersonate another person, or misrepresent your professional standing.
- We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, our community policies, or applicable law.
3. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- Post, transmit, or share protected health information (PHI) or anything that could reasonably identify a patient — including names, faces, MRNs, dates of birth, full dates of service, or images that contain identifying detail.
- Provide individualized medical advice to or about a specific identifiable patient.
- Solicit or offer paid medical consultations through the Service.
- Post content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, threatening, hateful, or that infringes intellectual property rights.
- Upload malware, attempt to gain unauthorized access, scrape the Service, or interfere with its operation.
- Use the Service in violation of HIPAA, the GDPR, or any other law that applies to you or your patients.
4. User content
You retain ownership of the content you post. You grant Spinal a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, display, and distribute your content within the Service for the purpose of operating it. You represent that you have the right to grant this license and that your content does not violate any law or third-party right.
5. Reporting and moderation
Any user can report a post, comment, or direct message for review and can block another user. Blocking a user hides their content from you and prevents them from messaging you, in line with Apple App Store Guideline 1.2 for user-generated content. We commit to acting on objectionable content reports within 24 hours of receipt.
6. AI assistance (Vincent)
Vincent is an experimental research assistant. Its responses are generated by a third-party large language model and may be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date. Treat them as a starting point for your own literature review, not as authoritative answers, and never as medical advice for a specific patient.
7. Wallet and $SPINE features
Spinal may offer optional, non-monetary features that link a public Solana wallet address to your account for community-recognition purposes (badges, soulbound tokens). These features are feature-flagged and may be modified or removed at any time. Spinal does not custody any funds, does not sell tokens, and makes no representation that any token has investment value or will appreciate. Nothing in the Service is a solicitation to purchase, sell, or trade a security or commodity.
8. Third-party services
The Service uses third-party providers including Auth0 (identity), Replit (hosting and storage), Groq (LLM inference), and Apple / Google (push notifications and app distribution). Your use of those features is also subject to the relevant third party’s terms.
9. Termination
You may delete your account at any time at spinal.science/delete-account or from Settings in the mobile app. We may suspend or terminate access for violations of these Terms, with or without notice. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (ownership, disclaimers, limitations of liability, indemnity, governing law) will survive.
10. Disclaimers
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, OR THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE. SPINAL IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL JUDGMENT.
11. Limitation of liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, SPINAL AND ITS AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS OR DATA, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE. OUR AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED FIFTY SWISS FRANCS (CHF 50).
12. Indemnity
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Spinal from any third-party claim arising out of (a) your content, (b) your violation of these Terms, or (c) your violation of any law or third-party right.
13. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the substantive laws of Switzerland, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). The exclusive place of jurisdiction for any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms is Zug, Switzerland — subject to any mandatory consumer-protection rights you may have under the law of your country of habitual residence.
14. Changes
We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be announced in-app or by email at least 7 days before they take effect. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.