Privacy Policy

Last Updated: [June 20th, 2023]

SJ Medconnect, Inc., d/b/a “thalamus” (“we” or “us”) is committed to protecting your privacy. We want you to know what information we collect and what we do with it. We are dedicated to treating your personal information with care and respect.

This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, store, use and distribute information through any of the Thalamus services, however accessed (the “Service”), our websites and applications, including but not limited to www.thalamusgme.com (the “Site”), as well as any related documentation, software and other properties we control (together with the Service and the Site, the “Properties”). Thalamus collects personal information from you as a customer, user or visitor of our Properties.  If you are a customer or partner of Thalamus (“Customer”), Thalamus may collect personal information from your organization or your organization’s users (“End Users”) to the extent that you’ve integrated your application or services with our Properties or otherwise provided personal information to Thalamus.

In addition to this Privacy Policy, you should review our Terms and Conditions of Use, available at https://thalamusgme.com/terms/. We use defined terms in this Privacy Policy relating to the Service that are defined in the Terms and Conditions of Use.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to Thalamus employee information.

1. Consent.

By using the Service and/or visiting, browsing or using any of our Properties, you consent to the use of your information or your End Users’ information as described in this Privacy Policy.  You may choose not to provide us with the personal information listed in this Privacy Policy, but we may not be able to provide the Services to you if you choose to do so.

If you are an End User of one of our Customers and want to learn about how that Customer handles your personal information, we encourage you to read the Customer’s privacy policy. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the services that our Customers provide to their end users.

2. Collection of Information.

The Types of Information We Collect

We have several areas where you can submit information to us, and we also have features that automatically collect information from visitors and End Users of the Properties. Personal Information, as that term is used in this Privacy Policy, is any information that can be used to identify a consumer. This includes, but is not limited to: name, address, telephone number, email address, Association of American Medical Colleges (“AAMC”) ID number and/or ACGME ID, and Personal Contact Information (as defined below), and application information, such as professional references, and educational background. If we charge fees for any of the Services, we may also collect personal financial and billing information as defined below. Thalamus is not responsible for verifying the accuracy of any Personal Information that you provide or post to the Service or any of our Properties.

Information You Provide To Us

  • Registration and Service Usage Data. When expressing an interest in obtaining additional information about the Services, registering for and/or actually using the Services, we may collect personal contact information, such as your name, mailing address, phone number, AAMC or ACGME ID and email address. You will also be able to add autobiographical information to your personal Service user profile, including images, video, and other files. Since our Services include facilitating your personal interview and travel scheduling, you may also be required to input data that is personal to your interview and travel planning.  This information is referred to as your “Personal Contact Information.”
  • Commerce Functionality. We may offer premium elements of the Service and/or additional services or products. In that case, we may collect additional billing information, such as a billing address, credit card, PayPal or other billing information (“Billing Information”).
  • Sharing and Community Features. We may offer features within the Service or other Properties that allow you to further communicate with us or with other users and to participate in community features, such as forums. These features may allow you to additionally upload images, data, graphics, video, or other files.
  • Surveys, Contests. We may occasionally ask you to participate in voluntary surveys. We may also conduct contests in connection with our Properties, as part of which we may request additional information from you.

Information We Automatically Collect

Our Services may automatically collect usage and technical information about you and your usage of our Service (or other Properties). This information is used by Thalamus for the operation of the Service and Properties, to maintain quality of the Service, and to provide general statistics regarding use of the Service.  This Information may include, but is not limited to: your movement through the Service and Properties, your device type, operating system, pages served to you, the date and time of your visit or use of our Service, what elements of the Service you use and what other users you interact with, data identifying the web pages you visited prior to and after visiting our Site or use of our Service or Properties. We may also collect your IP address and other unique identifiers for your applicable mobile or other device. Collectively, this information is referred to as “Analytics Information.” Some tools that we may use to collect Analytics Information include:

  • Cookies. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored on your computer or mobile device.
  • Pixel Tags/Web Beacons. These terms are generally used synonymously to describe small blocks of code on webpages that do things like allow another server to measure viewing of a webpage. They are often used in connection with cookies.
  • Other. We may use technology available on your device, technology similar to cookies and pixel tags and technology that is later developed, all for similar purposes.

We may also use these tools within Service-related emails that we send to you.

Information We Receive From Third Parties.

There are instances where we may receive information from third parties.

  • As part of their use of the Service, Administrators of Programs will pull applicant data directly from third parties that they have access to, including ERAS and ACGME, and provide it to Thalamus.
  • We may receive Personal Information from the AAMC for data analysis and research that may be conducted internally for research and development purposes, including development of improvements in existing and future products and services.
  • You may also separately provide information to websites, retailers or other commerce, product or service providers through which we provide access to register for our Service.
  • As you are using our Services, you may click through certain links or promotions that will enable you to purchase products or use services provided by promotional partners or other sites or commerce providers. Some of those entities may share with us certain information that you provide to them.
  • We may receive data from third parties and add it to information we have collected about you. Thalamus is not responsible and assumes no liability if another site or commerce provider uses any information about you in violation of its own privacy policy, or applicable law.

3. Use and Sharing of Personal Information.

We use, process, and share your Personal Information for things that may include, but are not limited to, the following:

Registration and Service Usage Information 

  • To manage your account,
  • To provide the Service,
  • To maintain our customer/visitor lists,
  • To provide feedback, for authentication purposes,
  • For service improvement, to provide updates and announcements, and
  • To address issues like malicious use of the Service.

Additionally, we may use your Personal Contact Information for limited marketing purposes, namely, we may provide certain Personal Contact Information to our partners in order to provide End Users with selected retail and other types of offers.  In addition to marketing and advertising, our partners may use your data for services that include but are not limited to, verification, validation, reference, lookup, risk mitigation and data enhancement (collectively, these are known as “Permitted Partner Uses”).  We may also use your Personal Contact Information to contact you to further discuss your interest in the Service, to send you information about us or our partners, to identify your company/organization as a customer, and to use your company/organization’s name and/or logo on our website and in our marketing materials. For our internal purposes, we may retain logs of all comments or messages that you post or send through our Services or Properties or via any partner or customer facilities. All information you send or post to areas of the Properties that are public or semi-public (such as message boards accessible to all Services End Users) will be publicly available.

Billing Information 

We use Billing Information solely to check the financial qualifications of prospective customers and to collect payment for premium services or products. We may use third-party service providers to manage and facilitate payment processing.

Analytics Information

We sometimes utilize third party service providers to help us track Analytics Information, as this term is defined above.  We may disclose Analytics Information to track an individual End User’s movement and use of the Services and other Properties. Such data may be stored and analyzed for purposes of internal analysis by Thalamus. We may work with advertisers and other third parties whose products or services are promoted on our Properties that may also use similar technologies. In those cases, we advise you to check their privacy policies.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when cookies are being sent. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of the Service or Properties may then be inaccessible or not function properly.

 You can opt out of receiving targeted ads from members of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”) on the NAI’s website.

Survey Data

Any Personal Information collected via survey (“Survey Data”) will be used only by Thalamus unless we specify otherwise when we ask you to participate in a survey. However, we may share aggregate survey or contest result information with third parties.

Information We Receive From Third Parties

We may collect additional Personal Information about you from third-party websites, social media platforms, and/or sources providing publicly available information to help us manage your account, provide the Services to you, maintain our customer/visitor lists, provide feedback, for authentication purposes, for service improvement, provide updates and announcements, address issues like malicious use of the Service or preventing fraud, and for marketing and advertising purposes.

We may also use personal information and de-identified data we receive from partners such as AAMC for data analysis and research that may be conducted internally for research and development purposes, including development or improvements to products, Services or Properties.

Anonymous and De-identified Information

We may aggregate, de-identify or anonymize data from personal information we collect by removing information that makes the data personally identifiable to you. We may use this anonymous or deidentified data and share it with our customers and third parties for any lawful business purposes, including to deliver Services, analyze and improve our Services, and to promote our business.  We may also use aggregated, de-identified, or other anonymous data for research purposes, which may involve collaborators and contractors.

Third Party Disclosures & Transfers.

We may provide certain elements of your Personal Contact Information to our partners for the Permitted Partner Uses. The following are the categories of third parties with whom we may share your Personal Contact Information:

  • any of our affiliated companies or partners;
  • any entity who you give us consent to share your information with;
  • partner organizations to perform data analysis and product development or improvement;
  • our partner organizations for research, which may involve collaborators, contractors, and other partner organizations subject to agreement with participating researchers and confidentiality restrictions;
  • companies acting as our service providers in hosting, building, developing or otherwise supporting our Properties and in providing our Service, including but not limited to credit card processing, customer/support services, and email provision to you;
  • entities into which our company is merged, or to which a substantial majority of our assets, equity, site or operations have been transferred or merged into (including during any diligence efforts in support of such an action); and/or
  • any entity with whom we are required to do so by law, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena or other legal obligation, in response to a law enforcement agency’s request, or in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) our rights or property.

4. Security.

The security of your Personal Information is very important to us. We use commercially reasonable and appropriate administrative, physical, and technical security measures to provide our Services and Properties and safeguard your information.  However, no data transmitted over the Internet or stored or maintained by us or our third-party service providers can be 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot and do not promise or guarantee, and you should not expect, that your Personal Information or private communications will always remain private or secure.  We do not guarantee that your Personal Information will not be misused by third parties.  We are not responsible for the circumvention of any privacy settings or security features.  You agree that we will not have any liability for misuse, access, acquisition, deletion, or disclosure of your Personal Information.  

You are also responsible for helping to protect the security of your Personal Information. For instance, you should never share your password or other personal credentials when you are using the Service. Furthermore, you are responsible for maintaining the security of any computer, laptop, phone, tablet or other device on which you utilize the Service.

5. Third Party Widgets and Links to Other Websites.

You will be able to share information with third parties through use of the Service and other Properties. The privacy policies of these third parties are not under our control and may differ from ours. We are not responsible for the privacy and security practices of those other websites or social media platforms or the information they may collect (which may include IP address). The use of any information that you may provide to any third parties will be governed by the privacy policy of such third party or by your independent agreement with such third party. We recommend that you contact such third parties directly for more information or to review their privacy policies.

We may display links to other sites, and we may provide tools and widgets from other sites and services, including but not limited to tools that allow you to share, distribute or otherwise publish or make available your travel schedule and plans and/or other Service content via such third-party properties. We are not responsible for those other sites and services, their privacy policies or how they treat information about their users. We advise you to check their privacy policies to find out how they are treating your personal information.

Links to any other websites or content do not constitute or imply an endorsement or recommendation by us of the linked website, social media platform, and/or content.

6. Retention.

We will retain your Personal Information for as long as we need to provide you Services,  and as required by law or necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our policies. We may delete certain records that contain your Personal Information.  We are under no obligation to store such Personal Information indefinitely and disclaim any liability arising out of, or related to, the destruction of such Personal Information.

7. Amendment of this Privacy Policy.

We reserve the right to change, modify, or amend this Privacy Policy at any time and without prior notice to reflect changes in our products or service offerings, accommodate new technologies, regulatory requirements, or other purposes, by posting an updated policy within applicable areas of the Service and Properties. If we do, we will update the “Last Updated” date and the new terms will take effect upon posting. You should review this Privacy Policy often, to make sure you have not missed any updates. Additionally, if we believe that any updates reflect material changes to your rights, we will use reasonable efforts to provide additional notice to you, such as by email or by means of a notice on our home page and/or sign-in page that you must view to enter the Service. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all Personal Information that we have about you and your account. The date on which the latest update was made is indicated at the top of this document. We recommend that you print a copy of this Privacy Policy for your reference and revisit this policy from time to time to ensure you are aware of any changes. Your continued use of the Services signifies your acceptance of any changes.

8. California Shine the Light Disclosure.

Under California Civil Code Sections 1798.83-1798.84, California residents are entitled to ask us for a notice regarding the sharing of Personal Information with our affiliates and/or third parties for their marketing purposes.  If you are a California resident and would like a copy of this notice, please submit a written request to: privacy@thalamusgme.com.

9. Children Under the Age of 13.

Our Service and Properties are not intended for children under 13 years of age. No one under age 13 may provide any Personal Information to or on the Service and Properties. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under 13. If you are under 13, do not use or provide any information on the Service or Properties or provide any information about yourself to us. If we learn we have collected or received Personal Information from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at privacy@thalamusgme.com.

10. Contact Us.

You can help by keeping us informed of any changes such as a change of address or telephone number. If you would like to access your information, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, or if you find any errors in our information about you, please contact us by emailing privacy@thalamusgme.com or by writing to us at:

SJ Medconnect, Inc.
77 Alviso Street
Santa Clara, CA 95050