Terms of service

1. What this service is

LukeBridge (Shanghai) (“LukeBridge”, “we”, “us”) provides coordination and medical-travel assistance to people considering treatment at a hospital in China. Our services are limited to:

• Reviewing your records for administrative completeness before submission.
• Coordinating translation and formatting to hospital intake standards.
• Submitting your case to hospital international departments and following up in writing.
• Obtaining the hospital’s written eligibility position and cost estimate where possible.
• Scheduling appointments, admission, and follow-up logistics.
• Referring you to licensed travel agencies and explaining the hospital’s invitation-letter requirements. We do not sell, book, or package flights, accommodation, transfers, or tours.
• Booking professional interpreters for key consultations.
• Supporting the payment route, where the hospital invoices you and you pay the hospital directly.
• Coordinating an English discharge summary and the handover to your clinicians at home.

2. What this service is not

We are not a medical provider. We are not a hospital, clinic, medical practice, pharmacy, or diagnostic centre, and we do not hold a medical licence in China or in your country. We do not:

• Provide medical advice, diagnoses, prognoses, or treatment recommendations.
• Practise medicine, employ physicians to treat you, or provide clinical care.
• Decide whether you are eligible for treatment or fit to travel.
• Prescribe, sell, import, export, courier, or supply any medicine or cell product.
• Sell, reserve, or broker a place in clinical research.
• Sell or package travel, or act as a travel agency.
• Provide emergency, urgent, or out-of-hours medical services.

Using this website, submitting the pre-screen, paying for a review, or corresponding with us does not create a doctor–patient relationship or any medical duty of care between you and LukeBridge. That relationship exists only with the hospital and physicians who agree to assess or treat you.

Our records screener is not a physician and does not decide eligibility. Their qualification and the country in which it was obtained are published here:

All medical services are provided by independent, licensed hospitals and their medical staff. Any information we provide about a procedure, product, or hospital is general information, not advice, and is not a substitute for consultation with a qualified clinician.

Nothing on this website or in our communications is medical advice. If you have a medical emergency, call your local emergency number — 111 in New Zealand · 000 in Australia · 999 in the UK · 911 in the US and Canada · 120 in China — or go to the nearest emergency department. Do not delay urgent care to pursue an enquiry about treatment abroad.

3. Eligibility and your responsibilities

To use the coordination service, you (or the patient’s legal guardian) agree to:

• Provide accurate, complete, and current personal and health information, and tell us promptly when it changes.
• Tell your treating clinicians at home that you are exploring treatment abroad, and follow their advice.
• Make the final decision about treatment in consultation with the hospital’s physicians.
• Read section 12 and satisfy yourself about travel insurance before you fly. Standard travel policies usually exclude travel undertaken to receive treatment; if specialist cover is not available, complications and repatriation are your cost.
• Obtain the visa, entry documentation, and funds required, and comply with the laws and regulations of China during your stay.
• Understand and accept the risks of international travel and of receiving treatment far from home.
• Ask your team at home, before you travel, whether they are willing to take over follow-up and manage late complications.
• Verify the credentials and accreditation of any hospital you choose, and satisfy yourself before you commit to treatment.

You are responsible for losses caused by information you provide that is inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date.

4. Fees

• Pre-screen: free.
• Written review: US$350, payable before the review begins. It is an administrative records review against hospitals’ published criteria plus the hospital’s written position where one is obtained — not a diagnosis, a treatment plan, or a second opinion. The fee is credited in full against the coordination fee if you proceed, and refunded in full if no hospital offers you a pathway.
• Coordination: US$15,000–US$30,000, agreed in writing before work starts and invoiced in three milestones: (1) records accepted and submitted, (2) the hospital’s written position, and (3) in-country coordination through handover. Each milestone is tied to a deliverable in the service agreement.
• Medical fees: invoiced by the hospital and paid by you directly to the hospital. We do not mark them up and take no commission on them.
• Trip costs (flights, accommodation, visas, insurance, interpreters beyond the agreed scope) are yours, paid at cost to the relevant provider. We do not book or sell travel.

Fees are quoted in US dollars. Taxes, bank charges, and currency conversion are shown on the invoice. We do not take a percentage of the treatment price under any arrangement, and we do not charge a fee for a research place.

5. Payment, cancellation and refunds

• Review fee: refunded in full if we cannot identify a hospital pathway, or if you cancel before the review begins. Once the written review has been delivered, the fee is not refundable, except where a statutory right says otherwise.
• Coordination fee: milestone payments already earned (deliverable completed) are not refundable; unearned milestones are refunded within 10 business days of written cancellation.
• If a hospital declines after a coordination milestone is paid: we refund the milestones whose deliverables have not been performed, and we do not charge for the decline itself.
• Third-party payments (hospital deposits, airline and hotel bookings, visa fees) are governed by that provider’s terms; we help you pursue a refund but cannot guarantee one.
• Statutory rights: nothing in this clause limits any mandatory consumer right you have in your country of residence that cannot be excluded by agreement, including the rights in sections 8 and 9.

6. No guarantee

We do not guarantee that a hospital will accept your case, that a treatment or product will be available when you arrive, that a quoted price will not change, that you will be fit to travel, that a visa will be granted, that an insurer will pay, or that treatment will succeed. A hospital’s written opinion is an opinion based on the records available at the time; it is not a promise of an outcome. Complications and cost overruns happen.

7. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, LukeBridge is not liable for the acts or omissions of hospitals, physicians, airlines, insurers, or government authorities, or for medical outcomes, complications, adverse events, misdiagnosis, treatment error, delays, cancellations, price changes, visa refusals, travel disruption, or loss of opportunity.

Our total liability arising out of or in connection with our services is limited to the fees you paid us for the service giving rise to the claim. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential loss, or for loss of profit or opportunity.

The cap applies only to the extent permitted by law. It does not apply to liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for any breach of a consumer guarantee that cannot lawfully be excluded, or to any other liability that cannot be limited. Where a mandatory rule applies, these terms are read down only to the extent necessary for that rule to have effect.

8. Your consumer rights by country

These terms do not replace, exclude, or restrict the consumer rights you have where you live. The following schedule explains the main effect of the non-excludable rules we know apply; local law controls if it gives you more.

9. UK consumers: 14-day cancellation right

If you are a consumer in the United Kingdom, you have the right to cancel a distance contract within 14 days from the day the contract is made, without giving any reason, under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.

Services started during the cancellation period. If you want us to start paid work before the 14 days are up, we will ask you to confirm that in writing and to acknowledge that you will lose the cancellation right once the service has been fully performed. We will not begin paid work early without that express request. If we begin at your request and you cancel before completion, you pay a proportionate amount for the work done and receive a refund of the rest.

If the required information is not given. If we fail to give you the information the Regulations require (including our identity, geographic address, and the cancellation terms), the cancellation period can be extended. Providing those details is why we publish our registered particulars in the footer and in section 16.

How to cancel. Email care@lukebridge.com with the subject line “Cancellation”, or use the model form below. We refund within 14 days of the cancellation, using the same means of payment you used. We do not charge a cancellation fee.

This section does not affect any other right you have under UK law, including your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

10. Research participation

We do not sell, reserve, broker, or price a place in clinical research. Under China’s 818 rules (State Council Order No. 818), in force 1 May 2026, clinical research may not charge participants any research-related fee. If a hospital considers you for a registered study, it approaches you directly; no research fee is payable. We will decline any engagement where our coordination fee would function as a price of admission to a study.

A hospital’s written opinion about a research pathway is not an offer of a place, and eligibility is decided by the study team under its ethics approval and protocol.

11. Referral codes

A referral code is attribution only. We do not pay cash, discounts, gifts, or any other benefit to a former patient or clinician who shares one, and medical professionals should not accept anything of value for referring a patient. If we ever introduce a patient-community programme with a benefit, we will disclose it before you rely on it, in line with the FTC Endorsement Guides and local medical-professional rules.

12. Travel, visas and insurance

Travel. We are not a travel agency. We do not sell, book, or package flights, accommodation, transfers, or tours. If you want help with travel, we refer you to a licensed travel agency; your contract is with that provider.

Visas. China does not have a general “medical visa” category. Most patients use an S2 short-stay private-visit visa with a hospital invitation or an L tourist visa. A CAR-T stay is usually six to eight weeks and may need extending at the local exit-entry administration before the permitted stay expires. Overstaying can lead to fines, detention, or a re-entry ban. We set out the route for your passport and the extension plan in writing; the consulate decides.

Insurance. Standard travel insurance usually excludes travel undertaken to receive treatment. Specialist cover for treatment-abroad complications is rare and expensive, and we cannot guarantee that a policy exists for your case. We give you a written checklist and tell you what we know, but we do not sell insurance and earn nothing from any policy. If cover is not available, complications, an extended ICU stay, and repatriation are your cost. Plan a 20–30% buffer.

13. Your information and cross-border transfer

We handle personal and health information under the PRC Personal Information Protection Law and the practices in our privacy notice, which forms part of these terms. Coordinating treatment in China involves sending your clinical records to the named hospital, and using service providers whose systems may process data outside mainland China. We do that only with your separate consent and after telling you the recipient, purpose, and categories of information. The privacy notice also explains the UK Article 27 representative and the US state consumer-health-data rights.

14. Complaints

If something goes wrong, tell us first: email care@lukebridge.com with the subject line “Complaint”. We acknowledge written complaints within five business days and respond in writing within 20 working days. Nothing in this section prevents you from complaining to a regulator, a medical council, or a consumer-protection body with jurisdiction over the hospital or over us.

15. Governing law and jurisdiction

These terms and our services are governed by the laws of the People’s Republic of China. Subject to the next sentence, disputes are subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Shanghai. Where a mandatory consumer-protection rule in your country of residence gives you a different forum or rights that cannot be waived, that rule applies to the extent it must — including the rights in section 8 and the UK cancellation right in section 9.

Before starting proceedings, both sides agree to attempt to resolve the dispute in good faith — in writing, with a documented attempt at mediation — for at least 30 days.

16. Changes, severability and language

We may update these terms; the version published on this page applies when you engage us, and material changes affecting an open engagement are notified to you in writing. The effective date is shown to the day, and a summary changelog is published below. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest remains in force. The English version controls; translations are provided for convenience only. These terms, the privacy notice, the compliance notice, and your signed service agreement are the entire agreement between us.

17. Contact and registered particulars

LukeBridge (Shanghai), registered in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Email care@lukebridge.com. These are the particulars required by the UK Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, PRC e-commerce law, and the consumer laws of the countries we serve: