VISIONCARE RESEARCH LTD

Privacy Policy

 

Your privacy is important to us

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Visioncare Research Ltd. is classified as a Data Controller.  This means that we decide how your personal data is processed.

  • VCR promises to protect your privacy and ensure that all information you give us is treated as confidential.
  • VCR will only use information that you give us for research purposes.
  • VCR will not release your personal information to any third party without your prior consent.
  • VCR will never try to sell you anything nor will we ever sell your personal data to any other person/organization.
  • VCR will respect your decisions about participating in a study, responding to questions, or discontinuing participation, without prejudice.

Contact Details

If you have any questions or concerns regarding privacy, please contact us:

Visioncare Research Limited,
Craven House,
West Street,
Farnham, Surrey,
GU9 7EN
U.K.

Tel: +44 (0)1252 718719       Fax: +44 (0)1252 718720
E-mail: research@visioncare.co.uk

Your Personal Data

Personal data means any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified from the information.

This may include:

  • your name
  • your date of birth
  • your contact telephone numbers
  • your email and postal address
  • your relevant health details including (a) current and past eye health/conditions, general health condition and spectacle or contact lens prescriptions; (b) current medication details; and (c)correspondence between optometrist and your GP/ophthalmologist
  • your examination and test results
  • your employment/lifestyle/driving information
  • details of any prescription supplied to you by your healthcare professional or medical practitioner
  • information that you provide by filling in forms on Visioncare Research website
  • any other information voluntarily provided to us by you from time to time

This information will primarily be collected from you as voluntarily provided to us, but we may also collect it from other sources where it is lawful to do so, including but not limited to, the NHS or other health care providers, institutions or individuals you have authorised to provide information on your behalf (e.g. parents or guardians).

How is that information used?

Visioncare Research may use your personal information for the purposes of:

  • your eye care treatment
  • selecting you for appropriate clinical trials that you may be interested in
  • letting you know when your next appointment is due
  • responding to queries from you
  • maintaining records for compliance with laws, defence of claims and other corporate purposes
  • managing and administrating insurance claims

If you contact us through the website and/or by email at research@visioncare.co.uk you will be providing us with personal information about yourself, including your email address, name and contact details.  This may also include medical information, where volunteered by you.

If you are simply browsing our website we will not collect any information which will identify you by name. However, we may collect information using cookies (see below) and/or traffic data which uses IP addresses or other numeric identifiers, which analyse navigation and use of the website.

How long is the information kept for? 

Personal information will be retained by us for as long as is reasonably necessary (or as defined under applicable healthcare laws and regulations) to provide products and services, including aftercare services, and to maintain records as required to satisfy legal or regulatory requirements, as well as to protect and defend against claims.

Who is personal information shared with?

Your personal information will not be shared with third parties.  Survey responses may be collected, stored or processed by our affiliated companies or non-affiliated service providers, both within and outside the UK.  They are contractually bound to keep any information we collect and disclose to them confidential and must protect it with security standards and practices that are equivalent to our own. 

The only exceptions when we may disclose your personal information or survey responses to third parties are as follows:

  • You consent to sharing your personal information and survey responses with the third parties for a specified purpose (e.g. for follow-up surveys or for reimbursement);
  • In the rare but possible circumstance that the information is subject to disclosure pursuant to judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants, orders or for similar legal or regulatory requirements.

Cookie policy

Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer by a website that assigns a numerical user ID and stores certain information about your online browsing.

Visioncare Research does not store any personal information on any cookies on our online surveys or on the Visioncare Research website.

Visioncare Research does not engage in passive data collection that identifies individuals.  All log data collected is aggregated and used only for the analytic purpose of examining the use of the website.

In the event that we discover or learn of any unethical conduct with the use of the technology, or that the technology is being used in a manner that is inconsistent with our policies or, in violation of applicable laws and codes, we will take immediate action to prohibit such unethical conduct ensuring the proper administration of the technology.

How to update or amend personal information

You can update or amend your personal information in person at Visioncare Research offices, by telephone or by email (contact details above).

What rights do you have?

You have certain rights under UK data protection legislation, including the option to:

  • access your personal information – we may charge a fee where we are permitted to do so by law
  • rectify your personal information if it is inaccurate or incomplete
  • erase your personal information and prevent further processing in specific circumstances and where there is no other lawful ground for continuing to retain and process that information. These include for example:
    • where the personal data is no longer necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was originally collected/processed
    • where you withdraw consent
    • where you object to us processing your personal information
  • block or suppress processing of personal information. While we are entitled to store your personal information, we cannot further process it if you request it to be blocked
  • move, transfer or port your personal information to another organisation; and
  • object to the processing of your personal information:
    • if processing is based on legitimate interests or the performance of a task in the public interest/exercise of official authority
    • processed for direct marketing
    • processed for purposes of scientific/historical research and statistics

What choices do you have?

Visioncare Research may use your personal information to contact you in relation to our clinical trials and surveys.  To change how we contact you, you may contact us by phone or email (details above).

Protecting personal information

We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorised access and use.

As effective as modern security practices are, no physical or electronic security system is entirely secure.  We cannot guarantee the complete security of our database, nor can we guarantee that information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the internet.  Any transmission is at your own risk.

In the event that there is an interception of your personal information or unauthorised access or use of our database, we will not be liable or responsible for any resulting misuse of your personal information.

We have no control over the contents of third party sites or resources which are linked to our website and we accept no responsibility or liability for them or the privacy practices they use or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of such websites or resources.

Updating the Visioncare Research Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any updates will take effect as soon as they are posted on our website.

 

 

Last updated May 2018