Privacy policy

AIM Healthcare Centre in Malanshof, Randburg is home to two practices: Randburg Dentist (the dental practice) and Randburg Optometrist (the optometry practice). This policy covers both, including the shared WhatsApp number the Centre uses for automated messages.

If you want to know what information we hold about you, or you want it corrected or deleted, contact the practice using the details at the end of this policy. We answer these requests ourselves — you do not need a form or a lawyer to ask.

We only collect what a dental or optometry practice actually needs to see you, contact you, and improve how people find us.

The Centre sends some messages automatically: a welcome with the guest wifi when you arrive, a reminder before an appointment, a request for a Google review after a visit, and reminders that a check-up or eye test is due.

Appointment-related messages are part of the care you have asked for. Marketing messages — recalls and reminders about treatment you have not booked — are only ever sent if you have given us permission, and never more than we have told you: at most one marketing message every 14 days, and only during ordinary daytime hours.

You can stop marketing messages at any time by replying STOP, or by telling reception. We act on that immediately, and it cancels messages that were already scheduled for you.

If you use the Smile Makeover tool, the photo you take or upload is sent to Google’s Gemini AI service, which returns a picture of what your smile could look like. That is the entire journey.

We do not store your photo or the picture that comes back. Neither is written to our database, and there is no save button — when your session ends, both are gone. We never use your photo for marketing, and our access settings are chosen to keep it out of AI training.

Every picture the tool produces carries a visible label saying it is an AI visualisation. It shows an idea of a possible result, not a promise of one: real outcomes depend on your teeth, your gums, and an examination by the dentist.

We record which pages are viewed and when someone taps a call, WhatsApp or booking button, and we use Google Analytics for the same purpose. If you arrived from a Google ad, we record that too, so we know which adverts actually help patients find us.

These records are about actions, not identities: they carry no name, and no phone number. Where we count what people ask our WhatsApp assistant, we count only which menu options were tapped — never the words anyone typed, and never who typed them.

We keep the list of companies that process information on our behalf as short as we can. Each of them only receives what that job needs:

Clinical and financial records are kept for the periods South African law requires of a healthcare practice — we cannot delete those earlier, even on request, and we will tell you plainly when that is the reason.

Everything else is kept only as long as it is useful: website measurement records, WhatsApp conversations, and the short-lived links we send you. Smile Makeover photos are not kept at all.

Under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) you can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, and object to marketing at any time.

Ask us directly and we will do it. If we cannot — because the law requires us to keep a clinical or financial record — we will tell you exactly which record and why.

Access to patient information is limited to the people at the practice who need it, and every automated system that touches it authenticates first. Messages we send are logged so the practice can see what was sent to whom.

No system is perfect. If information is ever compromised in a way that could affect you, we will tell you and the Information Regulator, as POPIA requires.

When the practice changes how it handles your information, this page changes with it, and the date at the top changes too.