Terms of Use

1. About these terms

These Terms govern your use of the OurTrial platform ("Platform"), operated by OurTrial Pty Ltd (ACN 702 835 854, ABN 58 702 835 854) ("OurTrial", "we", "us", "our"). By creating an account, accepting an invitation, opening a shared view, or otherwise using the Platform you agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Platform.

1.1 Who you are dealing with

Every agreement, licence, subscription and account on the Platform is with OurTrial Pty Ltd and with no one else. The Platform, its software and its intellectual property are owned by OurTrial Pty Ltd. Our directors, officers, employees and contractors act only on OurTrial's behalf: your dealings with any of them in connection with the Platform are dealings with OurTrial, not with that person, and they do not create any relationship, obligation or right between you (or your organisation) and that person personally. Where an individual associated with OurTrial also holds a role in your organisation (for example, as an employee, trainee or clinician), that role is separate from, and does not extend to, their work for OurTrial, and nothing done on the Platform is done in that other role.

1.2 Organisations

If you use the Platform on behalf of an organisation (a hospital, university, research unit, sponsor or training provider), you confirm that you are authorised to bind it, and "you" includes that organisation. Where an organisation claims a space on the Platform (Section 11), the person who claims it accepts these Terms for the organisation.

2. What OurTrial is

OurTrial is software for running clinical trials and supporting clinical research. Trial teams use it to recruit, screen, consent, schedule and manage participants and their delegation log; investigators use it to oversee the trials they are appointed to; doctors use it to find trials and refer patients; participants use it to find trials, apply, sign documents, book visits and communicate with their trial team; training providers use it to track trainees' research projects; and trial teams can share live, de-identified reporting with people outside the Platform.

2.1 What OurTrial is not

OurTrial is not:

• A source of medical advice, diagnosis or treatment
• A medical device, and it does not decide whether anyone is eligible for a trial
• An emergency service, and it is not monitored for urgent medical issues
• A trial sponsor, investigator, ethics committee or contract research organisation
• A clinical trial registry
• A system of record for a training provider's employment, credentialing or college requirements

Clinical decisions, eligibility and enrolment decisions, and legal and ethical responsibility for each trial rest with the trial team and its investigators. Tools the Platform provides (such as safety-reporting clocks, delegation checks, co-enrolment flags and reminders) help trial teams meet their obligations; they do not replace them.

In an emergency, call 000.

3. Accounts and roles

3.1 Eligibility

You must be 18 or over to create an account.

3.2 One login, several roles

One email address holds one login. A login may carry several roles (for example, a coordinator who is also an investigator on another trial, or a trainee who is also a coordinator). Each role has its own permissions; holding one role never grants another's access.

3.3 Roles

• Participants — anyone 18 or over interested in taking part in research.
• Doctors — registered medical practitioners. Doctor accounts are checked against the AHPRA register before referral tools are available. We may ask for further verification (Section 3.5).
• Trial staff — coordinators and site staff of a research organisation. Organisations are verified before their trials can go live. Access to specific trials and sites is granted by the trial owner.
• Investigators — people appointed as a principal or site investigator on a trial. The role is conferred by the appointment and ends when the last appointment ends. Investigators see identified participants within the scope of their appointment and act through the delegation log.
• Training directors and training teams — staff of a training provider who claim an institution's training space (Section 11).
• Trainees — doctors in training who declare a research or scholarly project and link it to their training provider (Section 11).
• Supervisors and other invited viewers — people a trainee or a trial team shares a view with. Some viewers need no account and sign in by an emailed one-time code (Sections 11 and 12).
• Delegation-log signatories without an account — team members (for example sub-investigators, pharmacists, nurses, statisticians) who accept or decline their delegation-log entry by emailed one-time code and typed name. Doing so is an electronic signature and is recorded in the trial's audit trail.

3.4 Your responsibilities

Keep your details accurate and your login private. Do not share your account or a one-time code. Tell us immediately at hello@ourtrial.com.au if you suspect unauthorised access. Giving false information, including a false AHPRA number or affiliation, may lead to suspension and referral to the relevant authority.

3.5 Verification

We check what we say we check and no more. We verify AHPRA registration numbers against the public register, verify organisations before their trials go live, and may request identity verification through our identity provider where a role carries access to patients or participants. A "verified" label means the stated check was performed; it is not a warranty of a person's conduct, competence or current standing.

4. Plans, pricing, billing and add-ons

4.1 Plans

Research organisations can use OurTrial on a free plan or a paid plan. Current plan features, limits (such as active trials, seats and sites) and prices are shown on the Platform and the pricing page. Participants, doctors and investigators are never charged. Training spaces are currently free; Section 11.7 applies if that changes.

4.2 Prices can change

Our pricing is foundation pricing and may change at any time, including the price of a plan, a seat, an add-on, a unit of credit, or what the free plan includes. We will give at least 30 days' notice by email and on the Platform before a change that increases what an existing subscriber pays, and the new price applies from the subscriber's next billing period after the notice period. If you do not accept a price change you may cancel before it takes effect. Changes to prices of per-use items (credit) apply to purchases made after the change; credit you already hold is consumed at the rate shown when it is used.

4.3 Complimentary accounts and credit

We may provide a plan, seats, features or add-on credit free of charge or at a reduced price ("complimentary"), for an evaluation, a pilot, a partnership or at our discretion. Complimentary access is a courtesy, not a right. It may have an end date, and we may change, reduce or withdraw it at any time on 30 days' notice (or immediately for breach of these Terms). After it ends, continued use of paid features requires a paid plan or credit at the then-current prices; otherwise the account returns to free-plan features as described in Section 4.7. Complimentary access is not transferable and creates no entitlement to the same terms later.

4.4 Billing

Paid plans and number subscriptions are billed in advance through our payment provider, Stripe. Prices are shown in Australian dollars and, unless stated, exclude GST. Tax invoices are available from the billing portal. We never hold your card details; Stripe does.

4.5 Add-ons and credit

Optional add-ons are paid from a prepaid credit balance that you top up (manually or by automatic top-up through Stripe). The balance is shared across all of your organisation's trials; you may set spending caps per trial. Credit:

• is drawn when the service is used (an SMS segment sent, a signature envelope sent, an identity check requested) at the rate shown at that time;
• is not refunded if the item is later cancelled, declined, fails, is abandoned by the recipient, or is not completed by the provider;
• does not expire while the account is open, and is not transferable or redeemable for cash except as the Australian Consumer Law requires;
• is not drawn by actions that OurTrial itself provides free (for example, our own consent document workflow).

When credit runs out, a spending cap is reached, or a payment fails, that add-on stops and the Platform falls back to the free path (email instead of SMS where you have allowed it; the OurTrial consent workflow instead of e-signature; in-person identity sighting instead of an identity check). Held messages are retried when credit is restored. We tell you when this happens.

4.6 Two-way SMS numbers

A trial can rent a dedicated two-way SMS number by monthly or yearly subscription. A subscription can be cancelled at any time; the number stays active with the trial until the end of the paid period, with no partial refunds. If a renewal payment fails there is a 7-day grace period before two-way messaging stops. Completing or terminating the trial ends the number's subscription at the end of its paid period. A released number may be reassigned.

4.7 If a plan lapses

If a paid plan lapses, there is a 14-day grace period. After that, paid features stop and the account returns to free-plan features; limits freeze at what has already been used. A billing change never deletes, locks or alters trial or participant records, and exporting your own trial's records is always free.

4.8 Refunds

Subscription fees are not refundable for part-periods except where the Australian Consumer Law or Section 4.2 requires. Credit purchases are not refundable except as the law requires.

5. Acceptable use

You must not:

• Use the Platform unlawfully or to mislead
• Impersonate anyone or misstate your credentials or authority
• Access, or try to access, information you are not authorised to see, or share a one-time code, shared-view link or invitation with anyone it was not addressed to
• Attempt to re-identify any person from coded or de-identified information
• Scrape, copy or extract data by automated means without our written permission
• Circumvent any security, spending cap or access control
• Harass or spam other users, or use the Platform's messaging or SMS for anything other than the trial or project it relates to
• Use participant contact details for any purpose other than the trial they relate to
• Use the Platform to recruit participants by means your ethics approval does not cover

6. Trial team responsibilities

If you run a trial on OurTrial, you (and your organisation) are responsible for:

• Holding current ethics approval before recruiting, keeping it current, and keeping trial information accurate
• Complying with the Privacy Act 1988, state health records laws, research ethics requirements, Good Clinical Practice and your trial's protocol
• Obtaining valid informed consent, whichever consent method you use on the Platform, including the layout and wording of any consent form you publish for electronic signature
• Keeping the delegation log accurate, so only appropriately delegated people perform trial tasks, and choosing whether the Platform records or enforces delegation
• Reporting adverse events and serious adverse events to sponsors and ethics committees within required timeframes; the Platform's SAE summary is a record export, not a sponsor safety report
• Acting on co-enrolment flags, which tell you a participant is enrolled in another trial on the Platform so you can check the trials are safe to combine
• The accuracy of anything you record, including participants you add directly, their consent to be contacted, and details you accept as true for enrolment
• Verifying a person's identity before confirming that a new account belongs to a participant already on your trial, and choosing the level of identity check your trial requires
• Deciding what to share through live reporting and with whom (Section 12), and the conduct of the people you share with
• Handling exported files securely once they leave the Platform
• Telling us promptly if you become aware of a privacy breach involving the Platform

7. Investigators

If you are appointed as a principal or site investigator you confirm that you hold the qualifications and approvals that appointment requires. The Platform records your acceptance of the appointment, your delegations, deviation resolutions, safety reviews and reports to sponsors in the trial's audit trail, whether you act through an account or by emailed one-time code. Those records are the trial's records and are retained as the Privacy Policy describes.

8. Doctors

If you refer patients, you confirm that you hold current AHPRA registration, are acting within your scope of practice, and have discussed the referral with your patient and obtained their agreement before making it. You will receive updates on your patient's progress through the trial. You must not use the Platform's trial listings or messaging to contact a trial team about anyone other than your own patient.

9. Participants

Taking part in a trial is voluntary. Each trial has its own consent and eligibility process, run by the trial team. Joining a trial is not the same as receiving treatment.

You can withdraw from a trial at any time by telling the trial team. Deleting your OurTrial account does not withdraw you from a trial, and the trial team keeps its trial records as described in our Privacy Policy.

If a trial requires it, you may be asked to verify your identity through our identity provider before enrolment. The trial team never sees your identity document; they see whether the check matched your record.

If you are enrolled in more than one trial on the Platform, each of those trial teams is told so they can check the trials are safe to combine.

You can stop text-message notifications at any time from your profile. Two-way messages from your trial team can be answered or ignored, and you can report a concern about a trial team to us from your profile.

You will never see other participants on the Platform, and nothing on the Platform tells you which treatment arm you are in.

10. Third-party services

Some features use third-party services: electronic signatures through Annature or through your organisation's own DocuSign account; identity verification through Stripe Identity; SMS through Mobile Message; payments through Stripe. Their own terms may also apply when you use them. If a trial uses its own DocuSign account, that account's terms and data handling are the organisation's responsibility.

11. Institutional accounts

11.1 Claiming an institution

A person may claim an institution's space on the Platform on its behalf (for example, as its director of training or, when available, its director of research). Claims and the people who make them are approved by OurTrial. The person claiming confirms they are authorised by the institution. An institution may hold more than one space (research and training) and each is managed separately.

11.2 Training spaces

A training space lets a training director and their team track trainees' research and scholarly projects (such as systematic reviews, case series and small trials): the programme template and stages, each trainee's progress, notes between the team and the trainee, and a research community board. It is a tracking and communication tool. It does not decide whether a trainee has met a college or employment requirement, and the institution remains responsible for its own training and employment records and decisions.

The training team may:

• Set the programme template, stages and thresholds; trainees may add their own milestones but not remove the team's
• Import trainees by name, email and stage, which sends them an invitation. The team confirms it is authorised to provide those details and that trainees have been told their project progress will be tracked on the Platform
• Customise the space with the institution's logo and a chosen address under ourtrial.com.au. The institution grants OurTrial a licence to display its name and logo for that purpose only and confirms it has the right to do so

Where a trainee's project is linked to a trial on the Platform, the training team sees the trial's stage and progress figures only. They never gain access to the trial, its participants or its records.

11.3 Trainees

A trainee declares their own project, links it to their institution and keeps it current. Notes between a trainee and their training team or supervisor are visible to the people in that thread as the Platform describes; internal team notes are not shown to the trainee. A trainee may share their progress with a supervisor and can see when the supervisor last viewed it. Survey answers a trainee gives at project milestones are used to run the training space and the community board.

11.4 Supervisors

A supervisor who opens a shared view does so by emailed one-time code and accepts these Terms by doing so. The view is for supervising that trainee only; do not forward it.

11.5 Research community board

Posts on an institution's community board (questions, opportunities, project ideas, tips) are user content under Section 13. They are visible to that institution's trainees and training team. Do not post anything that identifies a research participant or patient.

11.6 Directors of research (coming)

A director of research space will show an institution's trials in aggregate — counts, stages, recruitment and performance figures across its researchers — and let the director send updates to the institution's members on the Platform. It will never show participant details, identified records or individual trial access, and it does not change who owns or controls a trial. These Terms apply to it from the day it is released.

11.7 Institutional pricing

Training spaces are currently provided free of charge. Institutional plans, where offered, are priced by agreement or as shown on the pricing page, and Sections 4.2 and 4.3 apply.

12. Live reporting (shared views)

12.1 What it is

A trial team on an eligible plan can share a live, read-only report of a trial — recruitment, progress and performance figures, trial-wide or by site — with named people outside the Platform, such as a sponsor, funder, investigator or director. A viewer signs in by emailed one-time code. Every report is de-identified by construction: it contains counts, rates and dates, never a participant's name, contact details or free text.

12.2 The trial team

The trial team chooses what to share, with whom and for how long, and can change or cancel a share at any time. The team is responsible for ensuring the share is permitted by its ethics approval, sponsor agreement and the law, and for the figures it chooses to disclose, including small numbers that could be sensitive in a small trial. A shared report is not a substitute for the safety reporting a sponsor or ethics committee requires.

12.3 Viewers

By opening a shared view you agree that:

• the information is confidential to you and the trial team that shared it; you will not share, forward, publish or screenshot it without the trial team's permission
• you will not attempt to identify any participant from it or combine it with other data for that purpose
• you will delete anything you received in error and tell the trial team
• your access can be revoked at any time, and we may log when you view it
• figures are live and may change; the trial team, not OurTrial, is responsible for their accuracy
• these Terms govern your use, and if you view on behalf of an organisation, Section 1.2 applies

13. Content, records and intellectual property

• Your content. You keep ownership of what you upload or post. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, process, display and transmit it as needed to run the Platform.
• Trial records belong to the trial organisation. We hold them on its behalf. Training records belong to the training provider, and a trainee's project record is held for both the trainee and the provider.
• De-identified and aggregated data. We may create and use de-identified, aggregated data from use of the Platform to operate, secure and improve it, to publish benchmarks that trial teams compare themselves against, and to produce insight products (for example, which kinds of trials attract interest). Such data never identifies a participant, patient or trainee, and we never share identifiable participant information with sponsors or any third party for their own purposes.
• Search and usage analytics on the Platform are anonymous.
• The Platform — its software, design, text, loops and content we create — is OurTrial Pty Ltd's intellectual property. You may not copy, modify, reverse-engineer or resell it. Feedback you give us may be used without obligation.
• Trial listings and posts are the responsibility of the person or team that publishes them. We do not verify their scientific or clinical accuracy.
• Promoted listings (coming). We may offer trial teams paid placement in trial feeds. A promoted listing is always labelled, is only shown where it is relevant, never changes who is eligible, and requires the trial team's attestation that its ethics approval permits the advertising.

14. Availability and support

We aim to keep the Platform available but do not guarantee uninterrupted access. We may suspend access for maintenance or security. The Platform keeps an audit trail and backups, but trial teams remain responsible for their obligations if the Platform is unavailable. Support is provided in-app and by email; attachments sent to support are held for 30 days.

15. Liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law.

To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including loss of data, revenue or profit, or harm arising from participation in a trial found or managed through the Platform, from a training or employment decision made using a training space, or from reliance on a shared report. Our total liability for any claim is limited to the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

You indemnify us against claims arising from your breach of these Terms, from content you post, from a share you make through live reporting, or from a trainee import you were not authorised to make.

16. Suspension and closing accounts

We may suspend or close an account, a role, a space or a share if you breach these Terms, if it poses a risk to others or the Platform, if a doctor's registration is suspended or cancelled, if an institution withdraws a person's authority, or if required by law.

Participants and doctors can delete their account from their profile. Trial staff and investigator accounts are deactivated rather than deleted, because a trial's records must continue to show who did what; contact us to close such an account. A trainee's project record stays with the training space as the Privacy Policy describes. Obligations that arose before closure continue.

17. Changes

We may update the Platform and these Terms. We will email registered users about material changes, update the version and date above, and ask you to accept the new version at your next sign-in. Changes to prices follow Section 4.2.

18. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia, and disputes are subject to the courts of Victoria.

19. Contact

OurTrial Pty Ltd · ABN 58 702 835 854 · Ground Floor, 470 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne VIC 3004

General: hello@ourtrial.com.au

Legal: legal@ourtrial.com.au