Privacy Policy

Zameda Systems (“Zameda”, “we”) makes and runs Zameda, a pharmacy management system for Kenyan pharmacies. We are based in Nairobi, Kenya. For anything in this policy, including data protection requests, write to hello@zameda.co.ke.

We handle personal information in two ways, and the rules differ:

• Your pharmacy’s records (patients, prescriptions, sales, suppliers, online shop customers). The pharmacy decides what goes in and why. Zameda stores and processes it on the pharmacy’s behalf, under the pharmacy’s instructions. The pharmacy is the “data controller”; we are the “data processor”. If you are a patient or a shopper and want to see, correct or delete your details, ask the pharmacy first. We will help them respond.
• Your Zameda account and our own business (the pharmacy owner and staff who sign in, billing, support). Here Zameda decides how the information is used, so we are the “data controller”.

Our Data Processing Agreement sets out what we do as processor, in more detail. Pharmacies that run Zameda on their own server (the customer-hosted option) keep their records on their own equipment. We do not receive that data.

Health information (allergies, conditions, prescriptions) is sensitive. We treat all of it that way and limit who can see it to the people at the pharmacy whose role allows it.

• To provide Zameda to the pharmacy: the till, stock, prescriptions, purchasing, claims and reports. (Our contract with the pharmacy.)
• To meet legal duties the pharmacy and we have: tax records for KRA, controlled-drug and prescription records for the Pharmacy and Poisons Board. (Legal obligation.)
• To keep the system secure and working: stopping unauthorised access, fixing faults, keeping backups. (Our legitimate interest, and the pharmacy’s.)
• To contact you about your account: invitations, password resets, receipts, billing notices and important service changes.
• To send a pharmacy’s patients refill reminders or order updates, only where the pharmacy has switched these on. (The pharmacy’s instruction.)

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use patient or customer information for advertising.

We use these companies to run the service. Each only receives what it needs for the job listed.

When a pharmacy turns on sending sales to KRA (eTIMS), the sale and tax details go to KRA, because the law requires it. We will add other companies to this list before we start using them, and tell pharmacy owners beforehand.

We may also share information when the law or a court requires it, or to protect someone’s safety. We will tell the pharmacy first unless the law forbids it.

Our servers are in Helsinki, Finland. Uploaded files are kept with Cloudflare and backups with Backblaze. In each case the information is held outside Kenya. These providers are bound by their own security and confidentiality terms, and we will change where data is held if Kenyan law requires it. A pharmacy’s records are never mixed with another pharmacy’s.

• Pharmacies must keep some records for set periods, for example prescriptions, sales receipts and the controlled-drug register (the law sets periods of several years). Zameda keeps these for the pharmacy for at least as long.
• Zameda does not delete records automatically. They stay until the pharmacy asks us to remove them, or the account closes, and the legal period has passed.
• The audit log (who did what, and when) is kept for as long as the pharmacy’s account exists.
• When a pharmacy closes its account it can ask for a copy of its data. Within 30 days of a written request we delete or anonymise personal information, except what the law requires us to keep, and tell the pharmacy when it is done.
• Daily backups are kept for about 30 days and then removed, so deleted information leaves them within that time.

• Everything travels over encrypted connections.
• Passwords are scrambled so nobody, including us, can read them. Two-step sign-in is available.
• Each pharmacy’s data is kept apart from every other pharmacy’s by the database itself, not only by the application.
• What a person sees depends on their role. A cashier cannot open the pages an owner can.
• The screen locks itself after 15 minutes of no use, and a PIN unlocks it. When an owner deactivates a person’s account, that person is signed out within seconds.
• Every change is recorded in an audit log that names the person.
• Backups are encrypted before they leave our server.
• Error reports have personal details removed before they are sent.

No system is perfectly safe. We keep improving these measures and testing them.

Under the Kenya Data Protection Act, 2019 you can ask to: see the information held about you; correct it; have it deleted (unless the law requires it to be kept, such as prescription and tax records); object to how it is used; ask us to limit its use; receive a copy in a common format; and withdraw consent you gave.

Patients and shoppers: ask the pharmacy first. If you write to us, we will pass your request to the pharmacy and help them answer. Pharmacy owners and staff: write to hello@zameda.co.ke. We reply promptly and within the time the law allows. We may need to check who you are first. Where we must keep something by law, we will tell you what and why.

If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (odpc.go.ke).

If personal information is lost or seen by someone who should not have it, we will tell the pharmacy affected without delay, and in any case within 72 hours of finding out. We will say what happened and what to do, and help them report it to the ODPC and to the people concerned where the law requires.

Signing in to Zameda uses cookies and similar storage that the system needs to work (keeping you signed in, remembering which menu sections you opened). On a pharmacy’s online shop, a notice asks before any statistics cookie is used, and the shop works without it.

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will tell pharmacy owners by email before it takes effect, and show the new date at the top of this page.