What you can do
Under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International licence, you are free to:
- ✓Use the Gemba Suite tools for healthcare improvement, quality projects, service redesign, and education within NHS or other healthcare organisations — at no cost.
- ✓Share copies of the tools with colleagues, teams, and other NHS organisations, provided you include this licence and attribute David Clark / Gemba Suite.
- ✓Adapt the tools — modify the HTML/CSS/JavaScript, add your organisation's branding, or adjust workflows — as long as the adapted version is also shared under the same CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.
- ✓Use in training — include tools in lean improvement courses, workshops, and educational materials for healthcare staff.
- ✓Cite and reference the suite in publications, reports, and improvement documentation.
What you cannot do
- ✗Commercial use — you may not sell, license, or charge for access to the tools or any adapted version. This includes bundling them into paid consultancy products or SaaS platforms.
- ✗Remove attribution — you must not strip out the authorship information, version notices, or licence references when sharing or redistributing.
- ✗Relicense under different terms — adapted or redistributed versions must use the same CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence, not a more restrictive or proprietary licence.
- ✗Clinical decision support — the tools are process improvement aids, not clinical decision-making tools. They must not be presented or used as such. See the clinical safety note below.
How to attribute
If you share or publish work that uses the Gemba Suite tools — in a report, presentation, publication, or adapted tool — please include an attribution along these lines:
gembasuite.org · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Free for healthcare improvement
For academic publications, you may also cite the suite by name, version, URL, and access date. Contact david@gembasuite.org if you need a formal citation format.
Important: clinical use limitations
The Gemba Suite tools are designed to support process improvement — mapping, analysing, and redesigning how work flows through a service. They are not:
- ✗Clinical decision support systems
- ✗Medical devices under UK or EU regulation (MDR / IVDR / MHRA)
- ✗Validated diagnostic or prescribing tools
Before deploying in an NHS setting, organisations should satisfy themselves that use complies with their own information governance policies. The tools are designed to simplify this: single HTML files, local storage only, no accounts, no cloud, no third-party data sharing.
Information governance notes
The Gemba Suite has been designed to make NHS information governance sign-off as straightforward as possible:
- ✓All processing is client-side — the HTML file runs entirely in the browser with no server calls.
- ✓Data is stored only in the browser's localStorage on the device being used.
- ✓No external APIs, no analytics tracking, no cookies, no user accounts.
- ✓Data export is manual and user-controlled (JSON or CSV). Nothing leaves the device automatically.
- ✓The entire codebase is a single readable HTML file — your IG team can review it in full.
These properties mean the tools fall outside the scope of most NHS DPIA requirements as standalone process observation aids, but you should verify this with your own Caldicott Guardian or IG lead if required by your organisation.
Disclaimer
These tools support process improvement activity. They do not make clinical decisions, process patient data, or interface with clinical systems. They are not medical devices and are not subject to medical device regulation (MHRA, CE-IVDR, or equivalent).
The tools are provided as-is, without warranty of any kind. All data entered into the tools is stored locally on the user's device via browser localStorage. The author accepts no liability for data loss resulting from browser data clearing, device failure, or accidental deletion. Users are responsible for exporting and backing up their data regularly using the built-in export function.
The tools are intended for process improvement use by healthcare teams. They do not constitute clinical advice and should not be used as a substitute for clinical judgement or organisational governance processes.
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0
The complete legal text of the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International licence is available at:
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode
A human-readable summary is at: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Questions and permissions
If you want to use the Gemba Suite in a way that falls outside this licence — for example, in a commercial healthcare consultancy product, or under a different licence arrangement — please get in touch to discuss:
Feedback on the tools themselves is very welcome via the feedback page.