Helu helps you understand your health in your language. To do that well, we collect as little as possible. Your scans are not stored on our servers. Your results and history stay on your phone. We never sell your data, and we never show you ads.
Who we are. Helu is made by HELUHEALTH LTD, registered in England and Wales, company number 17326606. We are the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us at hello@heluhealth.com.
01 What we collect, and why
Your email address
You sign in with an email link or code. We keep your email so your account works, so we can send you sign-in emails, and, if you say yes, an occasional update from us. You can turn updates off at any time.
About you (optional)
Helu may ask your age group, gender, and ethnic background. This helps us make Helu better for you, because health information is often different for different people. Every question has a "Prefer not to say" option. If you answer, we save your answer to your account as a fixed category. If you describe your gender in your own words, those words stay on your phone; only a general category reaches our servers. You can change or remove your answers at any time in your Profile.
Your health conditions and preferences
If you add health conditions or dietary and faith preferences, they are saved to your account as fixed categories, so your experience follows you. Anything you type in your own words, such as an "Other" condition or preference, stays on your phone; our servers only ever see a general marker. Sharing is always optional, and you can change or remove your answers at any time in your Profile. We also keep anonymous weekly counts (see section 4).
Your scans
When you scan a medicine, a food, or a letter, the photo is sent securely to our AI service to create your explanation. We do not keep your photos or scan content on our servers. Before a document is analysed, personal details found in it, such as names, addresses, dates of birth, and reference numbers, are removed from the text. Your results are saved on your phone, not on our servers.
02 What stays on your phone
Your scan results and history, your saved medicines and alarms, your self-described gender (if you wrote one), and anything you typed in your own words, such as an "Other" condition or preference. If you delete the app, or use "Clear my data" in settings, this information is gone.
03 What we keep on our servers
- Your account: your email address, your email preferences, and your optional age group, gender category, ethnic background, health condition categories, and dietary and faith preference categories. Categories only, never your own words.
- Reusable results: when many people look up the same public thing, such as a medicine by name or travel guidance for a country, we may keep that general answer for a short time (7 to 30 days) so the next person gets it faster. These cached answers are not connected to any account or person, and your personal scans are never cached.
- Technical records: when the app asks our AI service for an explanation, we record technical details only — which feature was used, when, in which language, and roughly what it cost us. We do not record what you scanned or what the answer said. These records are deleted after 90 days.
- Anonymous counts: we keep weekly totals of things like which medicines are looked up most, which features are used, and which age groups use Helu. These counts contain no name, email, account, device, or any other way to identify anyone, and low counts are hidden even from us.
04 Anonymous means anonymous
Our weekly counts are designed so they cannot be traced to a person. There is no user column in that data, and there never will be. Deleting your account does not delete these counts, because they were never connected to you in the first place.
05 The services we rely on
We use a small number of trusted providers to run Helu: an AI service that creates your explanations, a secure database and sign-in service, an email service, an analytics service, and an error-reporting service. They process data only on our instructions, are bound by contract, and are not allowed to use your data for their own purposes. We never send health details, scan content, or your answers to analytics.
06 The legal basis
Under UK data protection law, we rely on: contract (running your account and providing the service you asked for), consent (sending your scans to our AI service, your optional answers about yourself, and marketing emails — you can withdraw consent at any time in the app), and legitimate interests (keeping the service secure, fixing errors, and understanding overall usage through anonymous counts). Health information, ethnic background, and faith-related preferences are special category data; we store them only as fixed categories, only if you choose to share them, and only with your explicit consent.
07 How long we keep things
Your account data stays for as long as you have an account. Technical records are deleted after 90 days. Cached general answers expire after 7 to 30 days. Anonymous weekly counts are kept for service improvement. When you delete your account in the app, your account and everything in it on our servers is deleted.
08 Your rights
You have the right to see the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, object to how we use it, take it elsewhere, and withdraw consent. Most of this you can do yourself, inside the app: change or remove your answers in Profile, withdraw scan consent in settings, and delete your account entirely, whenever you want, no questions asked. For anything else, email hello@heluhealth.com and we will help.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would appreciate the chance to help first.
09 Children
Helu is for adults. You must be 18 or over to use it.
10 This website
Our website (heluhealth.com) does not use cookies, analytics, or tracking. If you email us, we use your email to reply and nothing more.
11 One important thing Helu is not
12 Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle your data, we will update this page and tell you in the app before the change affects you.
HELUHEALTH LTD · Company No. 17326606 · England and Wales · hello@heluhealth.com