Straight answers. No fine print.

Medical practices in South Africa, from solo practitioners to multi-doctor, multi-branch practices. Every clinician who can be booked must hold current professional registration, which our team checks before their profile goes live.

Your calendar, services and team are set up in the practice workspace, and you can start taking bookings once a clinician is verified. Connecting your own WhatsApp number depends on Meta's business verification and template approval, which can take longer and is outside our control.

It covers scheduling, reception, communications, clinical notes, prescriptions, invoicing, payments and claim preparation. Whether it fully replaces your current system depends on what you rely on today.

One example: medical aid claims are prepared in Maatla Care but are not yet submitted to schemes electronically. Talk to us and we will give you a straight answer for your practice.

No. Reception can book patients who phone or walk in, using the same calendar. Patients can choose to create an account if they want to manage bookings, reminders and documents themselves.

Your practice is. Under POPIA, your practice is the responsible party for the clinical records it creates, and Maatla Care processes them on your behalf as an operator. Your practice remains responsible for retaining records in line with HPCSA guidance.

No. Access is based on roles. Reception sees appointments, contact details and the communications inbox. Clinical notes are limited to clinical roles such as doctors and nurses. Owners and managers do not see clinical notes unless they also hold a clinical role.

No. The assistant helps with practical tasks such as finding and booking appointments, answering pre-visit questions and explaining instructions your clinician has already approved. It does not diagnose, prescribe or give dosing advice, and replies that look like medical advice are withheld.

Every message is checked against a fixed list of emergency warning signs before any AI model sees it. If a warning sign is found, you are told straight away to call 10177, or 112 from a cell phone, with specialist helpline numbers where relevant.

The assistant cannot send help or contact anyone for you.

No. The assistant can suggest a booking, change or cancellation, but nothing happens until you confirm it. The confirmation is checked on our servers, together with your permission to act on that appointment.

No. The scribe is only used when your clinician starts it, after you have given consent. A visible indicator shows while it is recording, and you can ask for it to be stopped at any time. Audio is not kept after it has been transcribed.

No. The scribe drafts a note for your clinician. Anything the AI cannot link to what was said is flagged and must be confirmed, corrected or removed. Nothing reaches your record until your clinician approves it, and every version is kept.

We do not use your health information to train AI models. Our policy is to use AI and speech-to-text providers only under business terms that do not allow them to use the data we send to train their own models.

Yes, always. On WhatsApp, choose Talk to a person. During an automated callback, ask for a person. You can also phone the practice directly.

Maatla Care is designed around the principles of POPIA: lawful processing, purpose limits, data minimisation, security safeguards and your rights as a data subject. We do not claim certifications we do not hold.

Our privacy policy and processes must be reviewed by a qualified South African privacy lawyer and our appointed Information Officer before launch.

No. We do not sell personal information. We do not share health information with advertisers, and we do not send health information to analytics tools.

You, and the practices and clinicians caring for you, within the limits of their role. Other practices only see your records if you share them. Every view is logged, and you can see the access history in your account.

With a cloud hosting provider, encrypted in transit and at rest, with especially sensitive fields encrypted separately. Some of our service providers may process information outside South Africa. When that happens, we rely on the safeguards POPIA requires for cross-border transfers.

Yes. You can ask us to close your account and delete your platform information. Clinical records that a practice is legally required to keep are retained by that practice for the required period, even after your account is closed.

By default, the content of AI assistant conversations is deleted after 180 days. Consultation audio is not kept after transcription. Clinical records are kept by practices in line with HPCSA guidance.

No. We only use cookies that are essential for the site to work, such as keeping you signed in securely. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Practices pay a monthly subscription, with allowances for usage-based features such as AI scribe time and messages. Usage beyond your allowance is charged at published rates. Current plans and rates are on our Pricing page.

Most plans start with a free trial. The trial length for each plan is shown on the Pricing page, and you can change plan during the trial.

Each plan includes an allowance for features that cost us money every time they are used, such as AI processing, messages and calls. If you go over, the extra usage appears as separate lines on your next invoice, so there are no hidden amounts.

Practices can send a secure payment link by email, SMS or WhatsApp. Patients pay on Paystack's checkout, so Maatla Care and the practice never see or store full card numbers.

Yes. Your subscription stays active until the end of the period you have paid for, then stops renewing. Speak to us before you cancel so we can help you export what you need, because your practice remains responsible for retaining clinical records.

Patients: refunds for consultations are handled by the practice that charged you. Practices: if you were charged in error, contact us and we will put it right. Our refund terms for subscriptions are set out in the Terms of Service.