Clarification Needed: Using Gemini API for Medical Guideline Organization Tool

Gemini API
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Hello community,

I’m developing a clinical decision support tool for family physicians and need clarification on whether my use case complies with the Gemini API Terms of Service.

Use Case: The application organizes and structures medical guidelines and personal clinical notes to improve information retrieval for physicians. Key points:

  • Input: Official medical guidelines + physician’s personal notes

  • Processing: RAG + Graph RAG pipeline to minimize hallucinations

  • Output: Structured, searchable information display

  • No diagnostic recommendations or treatment suggestions are generated

  • Purely organizational/information retrieval functionality

My Concern: Section “Usage Restrictions” states: “You may not use the Services in the healthcare space, for medical advice, or in a way that causes the Services to be subject to regulatory requirements applicable to medical devices or that requires regulatory approval by a medical device authority.”

My Question: Does organizing and structuring existing medical content (without generating medical advice or clinical recommendations) violate these terms? The app functions more as an intelligent search/organization layer rather than a medical decision-making tool.

Technical Architecture:

  • Gemini API (paid tier) for document understanding and structuring

  • RAG implementation to ground responses in source documents

  • All outputs are traceable to original sources

I’ve reviewed the terms carefully but would appreciate guidance before investing further in development. Has anyone successfully deployed similar healthcare-adjacent applications?

Thank you for your insights.

1 Like
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Hi @Danielle_Collenbusch,

Welcome to the Google AI Forum! :confetti_ball: :confetti_ball:

Your description explicitly states:

  • “No diagnostic recommendations or treatment suggestions are generated”
  • “Purely organizational/information retrieval functionality”
  • “The app functions more as an intelligent search/organization layer rather than a medical decision-making tool.”

The prohibition is primarily against using the API to provide medical advice or to create a system that itself becomes a regulated medical device . If your tool acts as a sophisticated information organizer and search engine for existing, verified medical content, and does not interpret that content to offer new medical advice or diagnoses, it generally falls outside these direct prohibitions.

However, it’s essential to ensure that there is No Implied Advice in the way information is presented, shouldn’t guide a physician towards a specific diagnosis or treatment and No Medical Device Classification - meaning it shouldn’t perform a function that would typically classify it as a medical device (e.g., diagnosing, treating, etc)

Please review Google AI Additional Terms of Service and Google Cloud Terms of Service

Given the dynamic nature of both AI capabilities and regulatory environments, direct legal counsel tailored to your specific application and jurisdiction is always the most robust approach to ensure full compliance. While I can provide guidance based on the public terms, I cannot offer legal advice.