Caregivers & Family Access

A caregiver is a parent, guardian, adult child or carer who uses the patient portal for someone else. A caregiver signs in with their own Medbot account. They never share the patient’s sign-in, and Medbot never creates a second account for them.

Caregiver access is for people who cannot or will not use the portal themselves: a child too young to hold an account, or an adult who needs a family member to keep track of their care. The person a caregiver acts for is their dependant.

Key ideas

Giving someone access to your record

You manage who can see your record from Profile → People who can access your record:

A family member or carer can use Medbot for you with their own account. You choose what they can do, and you can remove them at any time.

1. Select Add a caregiver.
2. Fill in the form:
   • Their email (optional). With an email, only someone signed in with that verified email address can accept. Without one, the link works for whoever opens it first. The form warns: “Without one, anyone you give the link to can accept it, so share it only with them.”
   • How are they related to you?
   • What can they do? See my record (read-only, the default) or Help manage my care.
   • End access on (optional). Leave it empty to keep access until you remove it.
3. Select Create invite.
4. The Invite ready screen shows the link with a Copy button. Send it to your caregiver yourself. If you entered an email address, Medbot also emails them the invite.

The link works once and for 7 days. You can have up to 5 invites waiting at a time; to send another, cancel one first.

A patient cannot add themselves as a child’s guardian from the portal. Access to a child’s record is set up by the child’s clinic. See When the clinic sets up access.

Seeing and changing who has access

The People who can access your record card lists everyone with access, including people your clinic added. Each row shows:

• the caregiver’s name, or their email address partly hidden
• their relationship, their access level, and who added them: You, the clinic’s name, or Medbot support
• Last used and a date, or Not used yet, and the end date if one is set

For each caregiver you can:

• Make read-only or Allow changes to switch their access level.
• Remove them. Confirm with Remove access, or choose Keep to change your mind. Removal takes effect at once.

You can remove anyone, including a caregiver your clinic added.

Invites nobody has accepted yet are listed below, as Invite sent to and a partly hidden email address, or Invite link not yet used, with the date the link stops working and a Cancel button.

When nobody has access, the card says “Nobody else can see your record.”

Accepting an invite (for caregivers)

1. Open the invite link. It goes to a Caregiver invite page.

2. Sign in to your own Medbot account, or create one. A new account comes back to the invite once it exists. You still finish the usual onboarding for your own name and date of birth.

3. The page tells you who invited you and what you will be able to do, for example:

   • “Alex Tan has invited you to help with their health record”, or, for a clinic invite, “Sunrise Clinic has invited you to help with Alex Tan’s health record”
   • “You’ll be listed as their” relationship
   • You can help manage their care or You can see their record, and the end date if there is one

4. Read the consent statement and tick it:

   You will be able to see this person’s health record in Medbot and, depending on the access they were given, act for them. Use this access only in their interest. Everything you do while acting for them is recorded, and the patient, their clinic, or Medbot can end it at any time.

5. Select Accept invite. You are switched to their record and taken to Home.

If the invite does not open

Switching between records

A caregiver always has their own record and the records of the people they care for.

• On a computer, the sidebar shows a Viewing list: My record, then one row per person you care for. A read-only record is marked Read-only. The list appears only when you care for someone.
• On a phone, go to Profile → People you care for (“Records you can see because someone gave you access.”) and select View their record.

While you are acting for someone, every screen shows a banner:

You’re viewing Alex Tan’s record Listed as their Parent · Can make changes

Select Back to my record in the banner to return to your own record.

Every tab (Chat, Messages, Visits, Results, Profile) then shows their record. Notifications in the bell are theirs too.

What a caregiver can do

Some things only the patient can ever do, whatever the access level:

• connect or stop syncing clinics
• change how the clinic may contact them (consent)
• change their name or date of birth, or sync their contact details from their Medbot account
• share a guided care session’s summary
• add or remove caregivers

A control you cannot use is greyed out with a lock, and tells you why:

• Read-only: “You have read-only access to this record, so you can’t make changes here.”
• Patient only: “Only the patient can change this. Switch back to your own record to manage your own settings.”

On Profile, the clinics and caregivers cards are replaced by Clinics and caregivers, which explains that only the patient can connect clinics or choose who can see their record.

Ask Medbot knows who is typing

When a caregiver uses Ask Medbot or a guided care session, Medbot is told that a caregiver is typing, by relationship (never by name). It addresses you rather than the patient, and asks whether the patient is with you when that matters. If a message raises a red flag, the clinic is told it was sent by the patient’s caregiver, for example “(sent by the patient’s Parent, a caregiver acting for them)”.

Everything a caregiver does while acting for someone is recorded against their access.

When the clinic sets up access

A clinic can invite a caregiver from the patient’s chart in the CMS, for example a parent at a child’s first visit. The clinic checks the caregiver’s identity and relationship at the front desk before it sends the invite. See Patient Portal in the CMS.

• The invite arrives by email, with an optional SMS that contains no health details.
• For a patient under 18, the clinic’s invite normally ends on the patient’s 18th birthday.
• If the dependant has no Medbot account of their own, accepting also lets Medbot keep a copy of their records from that clinic, so their health record fills in as it would for any patient.

When a dependant later creates their own account, their caregivers keep access. The dependant is told “People can already access your record” and can review or remove each caregiver from their own Profile.

When access ends

Access ends when:

• the patient removes the caregiver
• the caregiver stops it themselves: Profile → People you care for → Stop, then Stop caring for them
• the clinic or Medbot support revokes it
• the end date passes

It ends immediately. If a caregiver is viewing the record at the time, their next page load returns them to their own record with the message “Your access to that person’s record has ended, so you’re back on your own record.”

Both sides get a reminder 30 days before an end date. If a clinic records that a patient has died, a caregiver who could make changes keeps read-only access only.

Notifications

Both the patient and the caregiver are told about changes in the portal’s notification bell, for example:

• “Someone can now access your record”
• “A caregiver no longer has access to your record”
• “Your access to” the patient’s “record has ended”, “has changed” or “ends soon”

Each new notification also sends an email titled “A change to caregiver access on Medbot”. The email contains no health details, just a link to sign in.