How we work
Governance and compliance
Armage works on both sides of medicine: the systems that move medical products, and the systems that help people find medical expertise. Those two things must never touch. This page states the separation in full, so nobody has to take it on trust.
Patient-facing pages
No industry funding
Clinician payments
None, ever, through us
Declarations
Dated and revocable
Health information
Not collected by design
01
The problem this exists to prevent
A page that helps a family or a referring physician find the right clinician works only because it is believed. The moment industry money touches that page, the belief is gone — and in the United States, so is the legal footing. The Anti-Kickback Statute, the Sunshine Act and the AdvaMed Code of Ethics all sit on that exact seam.
Most vendors avoid the problem by only doing one side. Armage does both, which means the separation cannot be a policy written after the fact. It is an architectural rule, and the rest of this page is what it means in practice.
02
The separation, stated in full
- Expertise surfaces are funded by the clinical side only. Sections, departments and institutions pay for them. No sponsor logo and no product mention appears on any surface a patient, a family or a referring physician reads. There is no amount of money that changes this.
- Supply-side work is a separate product with a separate payer. It is built from clinician-declared statements and public disclosures, and it is never sold as a way to influence where a patient is routed.
- No payment ever flows to a clinician through Armage. Not for appearing, not for declaring, not for participating.
- Descriptive, never preferential. Counting how many clinicians perform a technique is data. Telling anyone which product to prefer is not something Armage publishes, on any surface, for any payer.
- Counsel before the first industry engagement of this kind — as a gate that has to be passed, not an intention.
Written down in advance, including the part that costs us money: if the separation cannot be maintained structurally, the product that threatens it does not get modified. It gets dropped.
03
Why a declaration is not an endorsement
Clinicians state what they do — techniques performed, languages spoken, instrument classes used. Those statements are useful precisely because they are facts rather than opinions, and they are treated as facts:
- Declared by the clinician, not inferred by us from a video or a paper.
- Dated, so a reader knows when it was true.
- Revocable, on the clinician's instruction, without negotiation.
- Never rendered as a recommendation. "Uses" is a fact. "Recommends" is a sentence Armage does not publish.
The same discipline runs through the software itself: the design system used for clinical work has a component for evidence that will not render a claim without a source attached to it. A claim without provenance does not compile.
04
Consent for a clinician’s likeness and voice
Armage builds consented synthetic presenters — a licensed likeness and voice, so a clinician's teaching and counselling material can scale without consuming their calendar. Anyone can render an avatar. The part that matters is being able to prove the person agreed, on what terms, and to switch it off.
The governance is the product: a consent record, a licence with a defined scope and term, a record of every rendered asset, and revocation that takes the material down. This pipeline is specified and is being built; until it is running, no likeness is rendered for publication.
EvidenceDesigned — specified, not yet built
05
Health information
No protected health information enters an Armage system, by design. The work sits on inventory, identity, publishing and professional information — none of which requires a patient record — and the architecture is drawn so that it stays that way.
If a problem genuinely requires patient data, that triggers a different architecture, a Business Associate Agreement and a different price. We would rather say that than build a workaround.
06
Where counsel sits in the process
Regulatory counsel reviews the structure before any work begins that sits near this seam, and a compliance officer on the client side is welcome to read the architecture rather than a summary of it. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and none of it substitutes for your own counsel's reading of your own situation.
FAQ
Common questions
- Can a manufacturer sponsor a page that patients or referring physicians read?
- No. Surfaces that help a patient or a referring physician find a clinician are funded by the clinical side only. No sponsor logo and no product mention appears on them, and that rule has no exception for any amount of money.
- Does a clinician get paid for appearing?
- No payment flows to a clinician through Armage, in any direction, for any reason connected to what appears on a page.
- If a clinician states that they use a particular instrument, is that an endorsement?
- No. A declaration is a dated statement of fact made by the clinician, which they can revoke. It is never presented as a recommendation, and Armage does not publish comparative or preferential language about products on clinician-facing or patient-facing surfaces.
- Does Armage handle patient health information?
- No. Armage systems are designed so that protected health information never enters them. If a problem genuinely requires it, that is a different architecture and a different agreement, which we would say rather than work around.
Send this page to your compliance officer
It is written to be read by one. If something here does not satisfy your institution's rules, tell us which rule and we will answer it directly: hello@arm-age.com.