Security & UK health readiness

Product controls for clinicians, organisations and technical reviewers. UK health-system deployment is the primary readiness pathway. This is product documentation, not a claim of NHS approval, DTAC approval, DSPT status, UKCA marking or legal compliance certification.

Product posture

  • Clinician authority: AI-assisted drafts remain provisional, editable and attributable until the clinician owns the final output.
  • Invite-gated access: authenticated accounts with role separation and restricted operational access.
  • Data minimisation: transactional email does not contain case content.
  • nou is not an EHR and does not replace the organisation's official clinical record.
  • Session hygiene: idle timeout, HttpOnly session cookies and HTTPS in production.

UK / NHS readiness pathway

Before deployment with NHS organisations or identifiable NHS clinical data, Nou's operating model must be evidenced against the applicable UK requirements. Work is being organised around the following areas:

  • UK GDPR / Data Protection Act: controller-processor roles, lawful basis, special-category processing, DPIA, retention and data-subject rights.
  • Clinical safety: formal safety case, hazard log and accountable clinical-safety ownership aligned to the NHS clinical-safety standards applicable to the deployment.
  • DTAC: evidence across clinical safety, data protection, technical security, interoperability, usability and accessibility.
  • DSPT / data security: organisation-level controls and evidence where required by the deployment model.
  • Medical-device regulation: intended-purpose assessment before making claims or enabling functions that could bring Nou within UK medical-device regulation.

See the public NHS readiness register for a clear implemented / in-preparation split.

Hosted subprocessors

Hosted production currently relies on:

  • Vercel — application hosting and edge delivery
  • Neon — Postgres when DATABASE_URL is configured
  • Resend — transactional mail; no case content
  • Configured AI provider — provisional draft generation when enabled

Data locations, retention, contractual terms and processor/subprocessor obligations must be verified for the exact deployment before identifiable clinical data is used.

Technical control register

ControlNou implementationStatus
Unique user identificationAuthenticated accounts; invite-gatedImplemented
Role-based accessClinician role; restricted operational administrationImplemented
Automatic log-offIdle session timeoutImplemented
Audit controlsAccess, generation and export events when the database is enabledImplemented
Encryption in transitProduction HTTPS, TLS and HSTSProduction
Encryption at restManaged database / host encryption when production database is configuredProvider control
Integrity / versioningVersion history, export IDs and provisional AI labelsImplemented
Clinical-content email minimisationTransactional mail excludes case contentImplemented

Pilot rule

Do not treat a pilot as an exemption from governance. Identifiable clinical material should only be introduced once the pilot's controller/processor roles, lawful basis, DPIA, security controls, clinical-safety ownership, data flows and contractual terms have been agreed by the participating organisation.

US pathway

US HIPAA readiness remains a secondary market pathway. Hosted US PHI use requires the appropriate HIPAA-eligible infrastructure and executed agreements; see the existingagreements pathway.

Product documentation only. Formal legal, information-governance, clinical-safety and medical-device assessments must be completed by appropriately qualified parties for the intended deployment.

NHS readinessPrivacyUS agreementsTerms