How it works
Nobody is added to anything without doing it themselves.
The connection between a patient and a doctor is the part of Glycoz that has to be understood rather than taken on trust. So here is all of it — what each side does, what passes between them, and what happens when somebody changes their mind.
Connecting
Five steps, and four of them are yours.
- The doctor
Your doctor gives you a code
A short code they make in their panel. It expires, so one that turns up in the wrong hands next month is not a way in.
A doctor cannot add you. There is no screen in the panel that does it and no route in the system that would carry it. The only thing they can make is an invitation.
- You
You enter it, in your own account
From Your doctor on the home screen, or from My Care Team, in the app you are already signed in to. This is the part that matters: the connection is made by you, on your phone, with your hands.
A code lets a doctor in. It never gives them your login, and it never travels the other way — your password is stored in a form nobody can reverse, including us.
- You
The app tells you what that means, before it happens
A short screen: what they will be able to open, that you can narrow it category by category afterwards, that you can end it, and the things a doctor can never see at all. You tick to agree, and nothing is sent until you do.
It is deliberately four things rather than a list of every category. The list belongs on the sharing screen, where each line has a switch beside it and you can act on what you are reading.
- You
You choose what they can see
Sharing starts on for every category — which the screen before told you — and each one has its own switch. Switch something off and it is hidden from that doctor straight away. It deletes nothing, and your other doctors are unaffected.
There is a trade-off in doing it that way round, and it is explained further down rather than buried.
- The doctor
They read only what you left on
Their panel fills with the categories you left on, and asks the server for nothing else — a category you switched off comes back as “not shared” rather than as an empty screen.
That is decided where the records are, not in the page that draws them, and switching one off takes effect on their very next request.
- You
You can end it, whenever you like
From that doctor’s screen, with one confirmation. It stops immediately — not at the end of the month, not after a notice period, and not after a conversation about it.
Ending access stops them seeing anything new. It does not un-read what they have already read, and it does not take back a prescription they have already sent you.
The other way in
Or you find them, and ask.
If your doctor is not on Glycoz — or you do not have one yet — the app can show clinics near you and let you send a request instead.
- Your location is sent with the search, to sort the list by how far away each clinic is. It is not saved with your account.
- You see the clinic, the fee and the languages spoken before you decide anything.
- The doctor accepts or declines. Until they accept, they see only your name, city, age and diabetes type, and the note you send — none of your records.
- A decline comes with a reason you can act on — not taking new patients at the moment, outside the area they cover, or not the kind of care they provide.
- While a request is waiting you can withdraw it, and you can see that it is still waiting rather than wondering.
Worth saying plainly: the directory is new, and no clinics are listed in it yet. A clinic appears once its doctor is verified, its plan includes a listing and its map pin is confirmed. The report is there for every doctor who is not on it — they need no account to read one.
Once you are connected
What each of you can actually do.
You
- Record whatever applies to you
- Readings and doses, medicines and whether you took them, blood pressure, pulse, oxygen, weight, water, meals, walking and cycling — and sleep and steps read from your watch if you have one. Apart from the few that are always on, every module is a switch, and you turn off the ones you do not want.
- Decide what any doctor sees
- Category by category, separately for each doctor, changeable whenever you like and revocable in a tap.
- Ask for an appointment
- From the times their clinic actually has free, and hear back in the app.
- Raise an emergency alert
- From a doctor's card, it tells that doctor you need help, by email and a notification. It does not call an ambulance and it does not reach emergency services — and if it cannot be sent, the app says so and tells you to phone.
- Take a copy, or leave
- A PDF or CSV report whenever you want one, a copy of everything held about you emailed on request from Settings › Your data, and an account you can ask to have erased — from the app, where you have 30 days to change your mind, or by email without it.
Your doctor
- Read what you shared, as you recorded it
- With the times you actually recorded it, rather than what you can remember in a ten-minute appointment.
- Write to you
- A prescription or a piece of advice that lands on your phone under that doctor in Your Doctors, where you can mark that you have read it. Once you have, they cannot quietly edit it.
- Run their diary
- Confirm or decline the appointment you asked for, and let their own staff manage the book — each member of staff limited to the parts of the panel the practice has given them.
- Answer an emergency alert
- Which reaches them whatever their practice owes us. There is no commercial state in which that path closes.
And what a doctor cannot do
- Add you. Only you can start the connection.
- See a category you have switched off — they are shown that it is not shared, and none of its values.
- See what you ask the assistant. There is no permission for it, and you could not share it even if you wanted to.
- See anything at all once you disconnect, which you may do without telling them.
- Hold your password. Nobody does.
Where a record goes
Three places, and the order matters more than the list.
Your phone is first, every time. Your account is a backup and a bridge. A doctor's panel is a window, not a second copy.
Always
Your phone
A database on the phone holds the working copy of everything you log. It is written the moment you save, with or without a connection, and nothing is removed from it after it is backed up.
When you are online
Your Glycoz account
Records sync up as a backup and pull down anything you logged elsewhere. This is what puts your history back if you change phones — and it is why the app asks you to sign in.
Only if you connect a doctor
Your doctor’s panel
A doctor you have connected sees the categories you have not switched off. No connection, nothing to see. The panel is a window on your record, never a second copy of it.
The things that travel back
- A prescription or a piece of advice, which lands on your phone and stays yours.
- An appointment they confirmed, declined, cancelled or booked for you.
- A notification saying they sent something — never saying what. The words come from your own phone after you unlock it.
Their private notes and their own notebook do not travel back. There is no route in the system that carries them to a phone, which is a different guarantee from a setting that happens to be switched off.
Why it works this way
You agreed to what existed when you agreed.
Two rules that sound contradictory, and are not. It is worth two paragraphs, because it decides what happens to you a year from now.
Inside a connection, everything is shared unless you switch it off. The app stores what you have held back rather than what you granted, so nothing you never touched can go quietly missing from your doctor’s screen. You are shown exactly that before you connect, on a screen you have to agree to — not afterwards, in a setting you might never open.
But a category we add later is not something you agreed to. It could not have been: it did not exist. So it starts off for every doctor you were already connected to, and on from the start only for a doctor you connect once it exists — who was told about it, because by then it is on the screen you agreed to.
What this costs you: a category added after you connected starts off, so if you want that doctor to see it you have to switch it on. We would rather you had to say yes to something new than find out later that you had said it without being asked.
After you disconnect
What ends, and what does not.
Being precise about this is the only thing that makes the promise worth anything.
Ends immediately
- Their access to every category, at once.
- Their view of anything you record from that moment on.
- Their ability to open your record at all — the panel answers as though it does not exist.
Does not end
- What they have already read. Disconnecting is not a memory wipe.
- Prescriptions they have already sent you. Those are yours now, and they stay on your phone.
- Their own private notes, which were never part of your record.
And nothing commercial ever reaches you: if a practice stops paying, or leaves Glycoz entirely, your records are untouched. Every prescription, alert and appointment stays in your app, and you are never shown your doctor as “unpaid” or “suspended”.
You can use all of this, or none of it.
The app is complete without a doctor connected. Connecting one is something you do when it would help — not a step you have to get past to use what you installed.