Deleting an account or data
Last updated: September 1, 2026
Three different requests are described here, and they are not the same. Deleting your own staff login is immediate and affects nobody else. Closing a whole clinic account destroys clinical records and is handled as a verified request, not a button. A patient asking to have their dental record erased should go to their clinic, not to us — the reason is explained in section 3.
1. Deleting a staff login
A staff login is one person's access to the system. Removing it does not delete any patient record, invoice, or appointment — those belong to the clinic, not to the person who typed them in.
Your clinic administrator can deactivate or remove your login from Settings → Staff at any time. If you no longer have anyone at the clinic who can do that, or you are the only administrator, contact us through the Support page and we will verify your identity and do it for you.
Work that person recorded stays in the clinic's records, and the access log keeps the fact that they made those entries. That is deliberate — see section 4.
2. Closing a clinic account
This ends the clinic's use of the Service and leads to the deletion of the records it holds. Because those records are a dental practice's clinical history, it is handled as a verified request rather than a self-service action.
To start it, contact us from the Support page using an account with administrator access. We will:
- Confirm who is asking. We verify that the request comes from someone entitled to close the account, not from a single staff member acting alone.
- Give you your data first. You receive an export of your clinic's records — patients, clinical history, appointments, invoices and payments, and your uploaded documents — in a structured, commonly-used format, delivered over a secure link rather than by email. Keeping a copy is your decision and your obligation; once the account is closed we cannot produce it again.
- Delete on a schedule you have confirmed. Records are deleted after a 30-day window, so an account closed by mistake or during a dispute can still be recovered. We ask you to confirm the retention period that applies to your practice before anything is destroyed, because how long a dental record must be kept is a decision for your practice and its counsel — not one this Service should make for you.
3. A patient asking us to erase their record
If you are a patient of a clinic that uses dmdent.com, your dental record is held by your clinic. Under the Data Privacy Act of 2012 the clinic is the personal information controller for that record and dmdent.com is a personal information processor acting on the clinic's instructions.
In plain terms: we store the record, but it is not ours to erase. Deleting it on our own initiative would remove a clinical history that your dentist may be required to keep, and would do so without the person responsible for that decision being involved.
So a request to access, correct, or erase a dental record should go to the clinic that treated you. They can act on it directly in the system, and we support them in doing so. If your clinic does not respond, you may contact us through the Support page and we will help you reach them, and you may also complain to the National Privacy Commission.
A clinic's own decision to erase a patient record may itself be limited by recordkeeping obligations. That is a matter between the patient and the clinic.
4. What is not deleted, and why
Some information survives account closure. We would rather say so here than let you discover it later.
| What is kept | Why | For how long |
|---|---|---|
| The access log — who opened, changed, or deleted a record, and when | It is the evidence that patient data was handled properly, and it is the one record that must not be editable by anyone who might need to explain their own actions. The database physically prevents it being changed or deleted. | Retained as required for accountability under the Data Privacy Act |
| Our invoices to your clinic for the Service | They are our own accounting records, required for tax purposes. They contain billing details, not patient records. | The period required by Philippine tax law |
| Records already deleted, during their recovery window | A deleted record stays recoverable for a short period so that an accidental deletion can be undone, then it is destroyed permanently. | 90 days |
| Encrypted backups | Backups are taken on a rolling schedule and expire on their own. We do not reach into a backup to remove individual records. | Until the backup expires in the normal cycle |
5. Data on your phone
The Android app keeps an encrypted copy of your clinic's records on the device so it works without a signal. Signing out erases that copy immediately, and uninstalling the app removes it along with everything else the app stored. Neither action affects the records held on the server.
6. How long we take
We acknowledge a deletion request within 5 working days and complete it within the period required by the Data Privacy Act. If a request will take longer — for example because an export has to be prepared first — we will tell you why and when to expect it.
Making a request
All of the requests above start from our Support page. Please say which of the three you are asking for, so we verify the right thing and do not delete more than you intended. You can also read our Privacy Policy for how data is handled generally.