Privacy Policy

Healthcare Stakeholder Community - Privacy Policy

Last revised:

30th of June 2021

How we use your information

Ipsos Healthcare UK, commonly known as Ipsos Healthcare ("Ipsos Healthcare", "We" or "Us"), is a division of Ipsos UK Ltd a company registered in England under company number 01640855.

Ipsos is a specialist research agency based in the UK and part of the Ipsos worldwide group of companies.

This privacy notice explains how we use any personal information we collect about you (“Panelist”,”You” or “Your”), when you join our Healthcare Stakeholder Community online panel (“Panel”), take part in surveys, participate in the Community or use the Panelist website.

Topics:

1. What information do we collect about you and what is our legal basis for processing your personal data?
2. How will we use the information you provide?
3. Children?
4. Use of Cookies and similar code?
5. Use of Digital fingerprinting?
6. How long will we keep the information you provide?
7. How you can get access to your information and/or correct it?
8. I was offered a financial incentive for taking part. Why was this? Are there any ‘strings’ attached to this?
9. How do you ensure my personal information is secure?
10. How to contact us and Complaints
11. Changes to our privacy policy
12. Useful links

1. What information do we collect about you and what is our legal basis for processing your personal data?

Recruitment

In the majority of cases, you will become aware of our Panel and decide to join it without any prior contact with us. We collect the information you provide by email and by completing our recruitment questionnaire when you decide to join our Panel.  
In some instances Ipsos may approach you to see if you are interested in joining this Panel. When this happens, Ipsos requires a legal basis to process your personal data for the purpose of selection and recruitment for this Panel. Ipsos’ legal basis for collecting and processing your personal data in order to contact you to invite you to participate in this Panel is our legitimate interest. When Ipsos processes your personal information for our legitimate interests, we will consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights under data protection and any other relevant law. Our legitimate business interests do not automatically override your interests – we will not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you.
Ipsos processes the following categories of personal data about you in order to invite you to this Panel:

• Your full name
• Your professional affiliation
• Your professional or personal telephone number
• Your professional or personal email address
• Name of institution/work place

• Fulfil our contract with you.
• Keep a record of all Panelists.
• Send you invitations to participate in surveys that are relevant to you based on the information you provided in response to our recruitment questionnaire(s).
• Send you a SMS message to your mobile phone number containing a verification code, in order to verify your application and activate your Panelist account, when you sign up to our Panel.
• Append personal information about you to your responses to any surveys you participate in, such as geographical location, ethnicity, occupation categories etc. for analysing the survey responses and producing anonymous, statistical research results.
• Enter you into any prize draws that you are eligible to take part in or, where invited to do so, have asked to be entered.
• With your explicit consent, which might be sought in a specific research project and limited thereto, to pass your individual research responses together with your personal information to the client who commissioned the survey. The client will use this information only for research purposes as explained in the relevant research project. If any other purposes are required, we will likewise ask for your consent to this.
• Where you have explicitly consented separately and prior to your information being provided to the client for this, the client may also use this information to contact you to invite your participation in further research they conduct.
• With your explicit prior consent, we may forward your personal information and individual research answers to another market research institute which is our business partner, for the following purpose: sending you research invitations by e-mail or by phone with links leading to surveys or information on how to participate in other types of projects (e.g. qualitative interviews) or using your personal information for prize/gift delivery or prize draws (if the case) related to participation in these market research institutes’ research projects. Nevertheless, such a third party will be required to observe the condition that the data can be used only for statistical, research and/or prize/gift delivery/prize draw organisation purposes and will be bound not to forward or further disclose personal data such as your name, postal address or other personal information that could serve to identify you.
• To create anonymous, statistical profiles of Panel membership based on the information provided by Panelists.
• To respond to legal requests, prevent harm or comply with regulations such as Adverse Event reporting or where applicable to comply with local legislation around reporting of incentives.
• Send You by email newsletters, announcements and other communications as set out in the Terms and Conditions

We may also send your information to colleagues working in other Ipsos Group companies, and any sub-contractor companies who may be conducting some of the work we do on our behalf, and under our control and responsibility. Some of these sub-contractors may be based outside the UK and European Economic Area; however, they are required to abide by the same data privacy legal requirements and security arrangements as ourselves.

We may also store your Personal Information on systems hosted outside of the UK and the EEA, for example, on systems within the United States or Canada.

We will NEVER use your information for any purpose other than research. We will NOT try to sell you anything, nor use your information for marketing purposes. Nor will we ever pass your information to third parties for marketing purposes.

For more information about the community, please contact the Community Management Team. They can be contacted by email sent to Europe.online@ipsos.com, with "Healthcare Stakeholder Community" in the subject line.

Or by letter sent to:

Healthcare Stakeholder Community Management

Healthcare Online Operations
Ipsos UK
3 Thomas More Square
London
EW1 1YW

3. Children

This Community is only open to individuals aged 18 or over. Children under the age of 18 are not permitted to take part.

Where we conduct research aimed at children, we will always seek consent from a parent, legal guardian or other person legally responsible for the child before inviting them to join a Community or take part in the research.

4. Use of Cookies and similar code?

By joining our online research Panel and taking part in our online research, you agree to our use of cookies and similar technologies and the collection of information from your PC/Laptop or other computing device you may use whilst taking part in our online research activities as outlined below.

Our Panel website and online surveys collect information using 'cookies' and functionally similar technologies. Cookies are small files stored on your computer. Specifically, in respect of cookies, further details of what cookies are can be found by visiting www.aboutcookies.org

The emails we send to potential new Panelists will also place a cookie when images are downloaded and the email is opened. You can prevent this cookie being placed by simply opening the email as text only, closing the email before downloading any images or by changing your browser/email software to restrict cookies.

Standard Cookies

The cookies and similar technology that may be used in connection with this Panel are as follows:

It is possible for you to delete 'cookies' or to prevent their use by adjusting the browser settings on your computer. However, if you do prevent our online surveys and Panelists' website from using cookies, our surveys and Panelists' website will not work properly and you will not be able to participate in this Panel.

Special Cookies

These files are used as sparingly as possible and only for quality control, validation and, more importantly, to prevent us sending you reminders for any on-line survey you have already completed. It is possible for you to delete 'cookies' or to prevent their use by adjusting the browser settings on your computer.

In addition to our use of cookies, our online surveys automatically capture information about your IP Address, operating system, screen display settings, browser type, use of Flash and Java and to detect whether your computer has a webcam. We use this information to:

• ensure that the survey is delivered in a form suited to the software your computer is using.
• assist in providing support to you, should you have difficulty accessing or completing a survey.
• anonymised information is also used for research purposes, for example to determine the percentage of our Panelists in a specific country who use a certain type of browser.

5. Use of Digital fingerprinting?

We also use digital fingerprinting technology, also known as "Machine Identification" digital fingerprints, to gather certain information about your computer hardware and software, for example, your IP address, the display settings of your monitor, the type of browser you are using, the type of operating system you are using, to detect whether your device has a webcam etc. This information is sent to our trusted third-party partner who converts it into a unique serial number (the digital "fingerprint") and determines if it matches previous fingerprints. The data collected in this process and the digital fingerprint created are:

• used to ensure that the survey is delivered in a form suited to the software your computer is using;
• used to assist in providing support to you, should you have difficulty accessing or completing a survey;
• not tied to any of your personal information and stored on secured servers, and
• used for quality control purposes and to help prevent Panelists from completing the same survey many times.