Terms of use

Founded Health is operated as a sole proprietorship under the name Founded Health, from British Columbia, Canada. In these terms, we and us mean the operator, and you means anyone using the site.

By using Founded Health you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use it.

What these terms cover. Where we say Founded Health or the service, we mean all of it: the website at foundedparent.com and any subdomain or related site we operate; the answer library and every published answer page; the question and chat interfaces, wherever they are hosted; any application, home-screen install or programmatic interface we provide; and all text, summaries, source listings, evidence grades and other material made available through any of them. Parts of the service run on separate systems. These terms apply to all of them equally.

Founded Health is for adults with an interest in their own health and general health questions.

• You must be 18 or older, or the age of majority where you live, whichever is higher, to create an account or subscribe.
• It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If we learn we hold something a child under 13 sent us, we delete it.
• If you are between 13 and 17, you are welcome to read published answers, but please do not submit questions or create an account without a parent or guardian.

Founded Health is offered in Canada and the United States only. It is not offered in the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area or Switzerland, and we block access from those places. That is a deliberate decision about where we can operate properly, not a judgement about anyone. Please do not use a VPN or proxy to get around it.

The guidance we summarise comes from Canadian, American and international sources, and guidance differs between countries. An answer may reflect a recommendation that does not apply where you live. Product availability, dosing conventions, screening recommendations and public health advice all vary.

Your question is rewritten into clinical search terms, and a search is run that is restricted to an approved list of sources. A language model reads what it finds and writes a summary, naming and linking every source and grading how strong the evidence behind it is. Two things follow from that, and both matter:

• Answers are generated automatically. They are not written by a clinician, and they are not read by a clinician before you see them.
• Restricting the sources does not make the output reliable. It removes the most common failure of general chatbots — inventing sources — but the model can still misread a study, drop an important caveat, over-generalise, or summarise something poorly.

Every source is linked so that you never have to take the summary on trust. Some answers are later checked by a physician against the sources they cite and marked as reviewed. That check confirms one thing only: that the summary fairly reflects the sources named in it. It is not a clinical opinion about you, and it is not an endorsement of the answer as advice.

Founded Health summarises published guidelines and research. It is general educational information. It is not medical advice, not a diagnosis, and not a treatment recommendation for you.

Using this site does not create a doctor-patient relationship, a therapeutic relationship, or a professional duty of care between you and the operator or anyone else. Nobody here has examined you, knows your history, or has accepted you as a patient.

You are responsible for judging what you read here and for any decision you make about your own health, symptoms, medication or care. Always consult a qualified health professional about your own health, and never delay or disregard their advice because of something you read here. In an emergency, call your local emergency number rather than reading anything. There is more in what Founded Health cannot do.

About the reviewing physician. Reviewed answers carry the credentials of the physician who checked them, and that physician holds a current licence to practise. They take part here as an editor and reviewer — not as your doctor, and not as anyone's treating clinician. Holding a licence does not change that, and nothing they write or approve on this site is given within a professional treatment relationship or amounts to clinical advice about a particular person.

We say this plainly because a credential beside an answer can create the opposite impression, and that impression would be wrong. The review confirms that a summary fairly reflects the sources named beneath it. It is not an assessment of you, whom nobody here has met.

Founded Health is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate or prevent any disease or condition, and is not intended as the basis of any clinical decision.

It is not a medical device under Canada's Food and Drugs Act and Medical Devices Regulations, or the United States Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and it has not been reviewed, cleared or approved by Health Canada or the FDA. It is not clinical decision support software, and it is not built, validated or licensed for use by health professionals in practice.

Some questions are not researched at all. Where a question suggests someone may be at risk of harm, Founded Health shows support information instead of a search result. Where a question asks for help harming a person, it is declined.

Questions that trigger either response are not stored. The screening runs before anything is written down. There is no record of what you typed, and nothing enters the queue a physician later reviews.

Please understand the limits of that:

• The checks are automated and imperfect in both directions. They will sometimes flag questions that pose no risk, and sometimes miss questions that do.
• Nobody reads submissions as they arrive. There is no on-call clinician, moderator or responder, at any hour.
• This is not a way to report abuse or a crisis. Submitting a question notifies no authority, agency or professional. If you or someone else is in danger, contact your local emergency number or a crisis line directly. In Canada and the US, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is reachable by calling or texting 988, any hour.
• Showing support information creates no duty to act, monitor, follow up, intervene or report, and no relationship of care.

Because questions are submitted anonymously, are not linked to any identified person or child, and are discarded when screening triggers, we are ordinarily unable to identify anyone at risk even if we wished to.

Questions may be stored. Before you type anything, leave out names, dates of birth, addresses, employer or clinic names, phone numbers, health or insurance numbers, and anything else that could identify you.

You do not need any of it. Does magnesium help with sleep works exactly as well as anything more specific. Your own age matters and is not an identifier; your name is neither.

We also check. Every question is scanned automatically for personal identifiers before anything is stored. If the scan finds any, your question is answered exactly as normal and then discarded rather than saved. You will not be told, because there is nothing you need to do differently. It is a safety net beneath the request above, not a replacement for it.

You are responsible for what you type. If you include details about another person, you confirm you are entitled to do so.

An account exists for one reason: to raise how many new questions you can research each month, and to let you subscribe if you want more. Everything already answered stays free without one.

• Signing in means clicking a link we email you. There is no password.
• You are responsible for the security of the email account you register, and for what happens under your account.
• Keep your email address current. If we cannot reach you, you may lose access.
• Please do not share your account or your sign-in links.

We may suspend or close an account we reasonably believe is being used in breach of these terms. You may close yours at any time by emailing us.

Each visitor may research a limited number of new questions per hour, per day and per month, and the service as a whole researches a limited number each day. If you reach a limit you will be told, and normal use resumes shortly afterwards. These limits exist because every new question costs real money to research, and they may be adjusted at any time.

Paid subscriptions are billed through Stripe, in US dollars. Current prices are on the subscribe page.

• Renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period, monthly or annually as you chose, and your payment method is charged at the price then current until you cancel.
• Cancelling. Cancel any time through the billing page, which is Stripe's, not ours. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for, and you keep access until then.
• Price changes. We will email you at least 30 days before any increase takes effect. If you would rather not continue, cancel before the renewal date.
• Billing problems. If you think you have been charged in error, email us and we will look into it and put right anything that is our mistake.
• Failed payments. If a payment fails, access may be suspended until it succeeds.

You may use Founded Health for your own personal, non-commercial purposes as a parent, caregiver or interested reader. You must not:

We may limit or block access where we believe these terms are being broken. We do not need to warn you first, though we usually will.

Scraping, bulk extraction, embedding and resale cause harm that money does not readily repair, so you agree that we may seek an injunction or other equitable relief to stop a breach of this section, in addition to any other remedy, without having to prove financial loss first.

Subject to these terms, you have a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable licence to use Founded Health and read what is on it, for your own personal and non-commercial use. All rights not given here are reserved.

The text, design, structure, code, evidence-grading system and the collection of answers belong to the operator. Founded Health and our logo are ours and may not be used without written permission. The research and guidelines we link to belong to their own publishers, and their terms govern how you use them. We do not reproduce source documents; we summarise them and link to the originals. Citing a source does not mean its publisher endorses us.

You are welcome to share an individual answer with someone who needs it, including a screenshot, provided you credit Founded Health, keep the source links and date intact, and do not present it as your own or as personal medical advice. That permission does not extend to bulk copying, republishing or embedding, which are covered above.

Answers are written by a language model summarising published sources. Because of how that works, we cannot promise that generated text will never incorporate or closely reflect wording from a source, or that it will never infringe someone's intellectual property. We summarise rather than reproduce, and we link every source so the original can be read where it belongs. If you believe an answer reproduces your work, tell us and we will look at it.

Founded Health links to other websites. We do not control them, are not responsible for them, and do not endorse them by linking.

You keep whatever rights you have in the questions you ask. By submitting one, you give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to process it in order to research and return an answer, to store it and its answer where our privacy policy permits storage, and to publish the standardised form of the question — not your wording — together with its answer.

That licence covers those purposes and nothing else. We do not sell your questions, license them to anyone, or use them to train AI models.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, you give us a perpetual, royalty-free licence to use them without restriction or payment, and we are not obliged to keep them confidential.

Founded Health is provided as is and as available, with no guarantee of uptime, accuracy, completeness or fitness for any purpose. It may change, break, or be withdrawn at any time without notice. Stored answers may be deleted at any time, and published answers may be revised, corrected or removed.

We may suspend or close your access for breach of these terms, on a lawful request from an authority, at your own request, if we discontinue the service, for technical or security reasons, or for fraudulent or unlawful activity. If we close a paid account for any reason other than your breach, we will refund the unused part of the period you have paid for.

To the fullest extent the law allows, Founded Health and everything on it are provided as is and as available, without warranty or condition of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory. We disclaim all implied warranties and conditions of merchantability, merchantable quality, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement, and any warranty as to accuracy, currency, completeness, reliability, clinical validity, security or uninterrupted operation.

We do not warrant that any answer is accurate, current, complete or applicable to your child, or that it reflects the most recent guidance where you live.

Some places do not allow these exclusions, so some of the above may not apply to you. Nothing here excludes any warranty, condition or right that cannot lawfully be excluded, including your rights as a consumer under British Columbia's Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act or applicable state law.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary or punitive loss, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data or goodwill, arising out of or connected with Founded Health or these terms — whether in contract, tort (including negligence), statute or otherwise, and whether or not we were told it was possible.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability for all claims arising out of or connected with Founded Health or these terms will not exceed the greater of (a) what you paid us in the twelve months before the event complained of, and (b) one hundred Canadian dollars.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. If you are a consumer, these limits apply only as far as the law allows, and your statutory rights are unaffected.

You use Founded Health at your own discretion and risk, and you are responsible for the decisions you make about your own health.

You agree to indemnify us against any claim, liability, loss or reasonable cost arising from your use of Founded Health, your breach of these terms, your submission of identifying information about someone else, or your infringement of anyone's rights. If you are a consumer, this applies only as far as consumer protection law allows.

If you believe something here infringes your copyright, email hello@askfoundedhealth.com with: the work you say is infringed; what you say is infringing and where to find it; your name and contact details; a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised; and a statement that your information is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act for them.

We investigate and remove material where appropriate.

Repeat infringers. We will suspend or close the account of anyone who infringes copyright more than once, and may refuse them further access. This is a policy we apply, not a formality: a second substantiated complaint about the same person ends their access.

These terms may be updated. The date at the top shows when they last changed. Where a change matters, we will say so on the site and email account holders before it takes effect. Continuing to use Founded Health afterwards means you accept the updated terms. If you would rather not, stop using the site and, if you subscribe, cancel.

These terms, and any dispute arising from them or from your use of Founded Health, are governed by the laws of British Columbia and the laws of Canada that apply there. The courts of British Columbia have exclusive jurisdiction.

Before starting anything formal, please email us and give us 30 days. Almost everything is resolved that way.

Severability. If part of these terms cannot be enforced, it is narrowed as little as needed or removed, and the rest still stands.

No waiver. If we do not enforce something once, that does not mean we have given it up.

Assignment. You may not transfer these terms without our written consent. We may transfer them, including if the business is sold or reorganised, on notice to you.

Entire agreement. These terms and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between us about Founded Health, and replace anything said or written before.

Survival. The sections on medical advice, medical devices, crisis limitations, personal details, ownership, warranties, liability and governing law continue to apply after you stop using the site.

Notices. We contact you by email or by posting on the site. You contact us by email.

Events outside our control. We are not liable for failing to do something because of circumstances we could not reasonably control.

Third parties. Nobody other than you and us can enforce these terms.

No partnership. These terms do not create a joint venture, partnership, employment or agency relationship between you and us, and neither of us may hold out otherwise.

Where we operate from. Founded Health is run from Canada. If you use it from elsewhere you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for complying with your own local law. You may not use it if you are in a country subject to Canadian or United States sanctions or embargo, or if you are a person or organisation that either government has listed as blocked or denied.

Legal process. Nothing in these terms limits our ability to comply with a lawful request from a court, regulator or law enforcement agency.