Your data, your custody

Your record belongs to you — and that means you can keep your own copy, too. This is a plain-language guide to making a personal copy of your health record and keeping it safe at home, so it's always yours no matter what.

You can take it with you

Everything you bring into BRILL.health is yours. Any time you like, you can save a copy to your own computer — your summary plus the original documents behind it, like records from your doctors, your insurer, and your lab results. Keeping your own copy means your record is always in your hands.

Where to keep your copy safe

Think of your saved copy like important papers you'd keep in a locked drawer. A few simple habits keep it safe:

  • Turn on your computer's built-in lock. It's called FileVault on a Mac and BitLocker on Windows, and your phone already does this. It scrambles everything on the device so a lost or stolen computer doesn't hand over your records. This one step does the most good.
  • Use a good passcode and let it lock quickly when you step away.
  • Keep a backup. A second copy on an encrypted external drive means a broken computer never means a lost record.
  • Sign in as yourself on a computer you share with family, rather than a shared login, so your record stays yours.

Extra care for the most sensitive records

Some records — genetic results most of all — deserve an extra lock. Keep those inside an encrypted folder (an encrypted disk image on a Mac, BitLocker on Windows, or a free tool like 7-Zip with a password). It's a second locked box inside the locked drawer. Routine records under your computer's built-in lock are already well protected; save the extra step for the records you'd most want to keep private.

A few things to avoid: don't keep the only copy in an email inbox, on a plain USB stick, or synced to the cloud unprotected. Those are easy to lose track of.

If you set up a recovery key, keep it somewhere separate

As we roll out a way to lock your record so that only you can open it, you'll set up two things: your everyday sign-in (your Face ID, fingerprint, or passkey) and a recovery key — a backup that gets you in if you ever lose your usual sign-in.

Here's the important part, in plain terms: don't keep your recovery key in the same place as your passkey. If both live in the same account — say, both saved in your Apple or Google password vault — then losing access to that one account would lock you out of both at once, and the backup couldn't do its job. Keep your recovery key somewhere of its own: written on paper in a safe place, printed and tucked away, or in a different password manager.

The biggest real risk is simply losing it — so any safe record beats none. If it's easiest to save it in your password vault, that's okay, but also keep one copy on paper somewhere safe, so a single account problem can never lock you out.

What "your custody" means — the honest part

While your record lives in BRILL.health, we protect it for you. Once you save your own copy to your computer, that copy is in your hands — its safety becomes your computer's lock and the steps above, not ours. That's the trade that comes with truly owning your record: it's yours to keep, and yours to protect. We'll always make it easy to save a copy and, soon, to save one that's locked with your own recovery key for extra peace of mind.

Want to know how we keep your record safe while it's with us? Read how we protect your data, our Privacy Policy, or contact us.