Privacy Policy

hVIVO is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This privacy policy provides information to you about the basis on which any personal information (“personal data“) we collect from you, or that you provide to us through our FluCamp website, will be processed by us or any other party on our behalf. This privacy policy shall be read in conjunction with our cookies policy and our website terms of use.

In this privacy policy, the terms “we“, “our“, and “us” are used to refer to hVIVO Services Limited. We are registered in England and Wales under company number 02326557 and have our office at 40 Bank Street, London, E14 5NR. “we”, “our”, and “us” may also refer to any party that we may appoint to undertake any of the actions covered by this policy on our behalf. We are a data controller and will handle (“process“) any personal data that we collect about you in accordance will the law, including, where applicable, but not limited to: (i) the Clinical Trial Directive (Directive 2001/20/EC), the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trial) Regulations 2004 and any replacement legislation and (ii) the General Data Protection Regulation 2016, the Data Protection Act 2018, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 and its replacement and the guidance and codes of practice issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (‘ICO’).

Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

Children

This website is not intended for nor designed to attract individuals under the age of 18. We do not collect personal data from any person whom we know or suspect is an individual under the age of 18.

WHAT PERSONAL DATA DO WE COLLECT?

We process your personal data, which may include your name, email address, phone number and details of any enquiry which you may have, when you submit a question through the ‘Contact Us’ tab on our website or when you telephone us with a query.

We may collect and process records of any correspondence and communications with us and telephone calls may also be recorded.

We also process your personal data when you submit an application through our website to take part in one of our FluCamp clinical trials.

Applicants for clinical trials and other research-related projects

When you submit an application through our FluCamp website to participate in one of our clinical trials, the online application form will ask for your name, email address and best contact telephone number, so that we are able to make contact with you and keep in touch with you for the purposes set out in this privacy policy.

The online application form also contains initial screening questions in order to ascertain your general suitability for our clinical trials and where applicable, other research-related projects for example hVIVO’s Research Tissue Bank. The form asks you to provide your gender, date of birth, ethnicity, weight and height and contains questions about your current health and medical history, whether or not you can read/write in English, whether you are registered with a doctor (a General Practitioner, ‘GP’) in the UK and your availability to attend appointments in London, UK. The form also asks if you have valid photo ID (passport or driving licence only).

We may also collect the above information from you if you make an application to us by email or by telephone.

Following the submission of your application, you will be notified immediately if you have met the criteria for further screening, if you are suitable for further screening we will be in touch with you regarding the outcome of that application and your details will be stored in our database for the purpose of possibly enrolling you on a current or future clinical trial and/or other research-related projects, for example hVIVO’s Research Tissue Bank. If you are advised that you have been accepted to progress to the screening stage of a specific clinical trial at our clinic we will, at that point, provide you with further details of the study and discuss obtaining your informed consent to participate in the trial, in line with our legal obligations. If you are advised that you are suitable to provide a sample (or samples) for hVIVO’s Research Tissue Bank, we will provide you with our ‘Donor Information Sheet’ which contains all relevant information.

As part of the process of obtaining your fully informed consent to participate in screening and specifically a clinical trial, we will provide you with our ‘Participant Information Sheet which contains our ‘Privacy Notice for Volunteers’ which sets out the fair processing information required by data protection law. This explains how we use (i) the personal data which we will have already collected from you and (ii) the additional information which we collect from you and any third parties, from this stage onwards. The Privacy Notice for Volunteers will also explain the legal bases, under data protection law, for the processing of this information from the Screening stage onwards.

HOW WE USE YOUR information

If applicable, where you are accepted onto one of our clinical trials, your personal data will be used for research purposes within the relevant clinical trial and in accordance with our Privacy Notice for Volunteers.

We use information held about you in the following ways:

  • to communicate with you (in writing, by telephone or by email/text message), to respond to any query which you send via our website or in response to your online application to participate in one of our clinical trials or a clinical trial of our partners as detailed below;
  • to manage the recruitment process for registering your interest in becoming a clinical trial volunteer;
  • to provide you with information about other clinical research studies (including those of our partners) which you may be interested in and for which you are suitable in terms of your participation;
  • to provide you with information about our research and those of our partners, if you have provided additional consent to be added to the FluCamp mailing list, to receive marketing information and details of research completed by other companies;
  • to build a profile of you, your health and your preferences in order to determine your suitability for participation in clinical trials;
  • to aggregate and anonymise your personal data so that we can conduct research and analysis to better understand the types of individuals who may be interested in participating in clinical trials and other research;
  • to produce aggregated data analytics, statistical research and reports, which may be used to review and change our services;
  • to improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
  • as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure;
  • to measure, understand or monitor the effectiveness of advertising, promotions, marketing material and content and any joint initiatives with our affiliates, suppliers, partners, subcontractors and other selected third parties;

USING YOUR INFORMATION IN ACCORDANCE WITH DATA PROTECTION LAW

Data protection laws require that we meet certain conditions before we are allowed to use your data in the manner described in this privacy policy.  We take our responsibilities under data protection laws extremely seriously, including meeting these conditions.  To use your personal data, we will rely on the following conditions, depending on the activities we are carrying out:

Consent:  We are legally required to obtain your informed consent to participate in any of our clinical trials and/or other research-related projects for example hVIVO’s Research Tissue Bank. However, the rules which apply to the processing of your personal data in connection with screening, our clinical trials and/or other research-related projects (for example hVIVO’s Research Tissue Bank), once you have given your informed consent to participate, are found within separate and quite different laws (data protection law). This means that we will sometimes ask you to provide your consent for the collection and/or further use of your personal data, whilst on other occasions a different legal basis (see below) may be more legally appropriate depending on the purposes for which your personal data are to be used by us.

We will ask you to provide your explicit consent to the processing of the personal data contained within your online application to participate in a clinical trial. Processing of this personal data may include processing of the data in connection with other research-related projects including (if you consent to take part) hVIVO’s Research Tissue Bank. This includes special category data such as, but not limited to, information about your health. We ask you to read this Privacy Policy prior to providing your consent so that you are fully informed as to how and why your personal data will be used. Your explicit consent to the processing of the personal data contained within your online application is provided to us by ticking the relevant box at the start of the application and by submitting the application form to us.

Compliance with legal obligations: As an entity established under the laws of England and Wales, we are obliged to comply with UK laws and guidance provided by UK regulatory bodies. Where we are legally obliged to disclose your personal data to a third party e.g. within the terms of a UK court order or where required to do so in line with a specific requirement in any UK legislation, the processing will fall within this category. You will not be able to object to the processing or ask for the deletion of your personal data when it is processed upon this legal basis.

Legitimate interests: To use your personal data for any other purpose described in this privacy policy, we will rely on a condition known as “legitimate interests”. This legal basis requires us to carry out a balancing test of our interests in using your personal data (for example, to aggregate and anonymise your personal data so that we can conduct research and analysis to better understand the types of individuals who may be interested in participating in clinical research studies) against the interests you have as a citizen and the rights you have under data protection laws. The outcome of this balancing test will determine whether we can use your personal data in the ways described in this privacy policy. We will always act reasonably and give full and proper consideration to your interests in carrying out this balancing test.

It is in our legitimate interests to collect your personal data when you browse our website, for example, as it provides us with the information that we need in order to improve your experience and those of other visitors as they use the website in future.

HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION FOR

We may retain your personal data for as long as it is needed for the purposes indicated in this Privacy Policy and strictly in accordance with data protection legislation.

The period of time for which personal data is processed (including storage) will depend on the nature of the personal data and the purpose for which we have indicated to you that it is to be processed by us. Personal data held for a direct marketing purpose is held for five years whereas personal data which you have provided for use within one of our clinical trials, will be subject to specific legal and regulatory rules. Where applicable, our Privacy Notice for Volunteers provides further guidance on the processing (including retention) of your personal data when you participate in one of our clinical trials.

If you are not initially accepted onto one of clinical trials, we will retain your details on our database for five years so that we may contact you in the event that a suitable clinical trial becomes available for which you may wish to be considered. We would ask that you keep us updated in relation to your contact details if you wish to remain on our database for this purpose. In the weeks preceding your data deletion, we will endeavour to contact you by email to ask if you wish for us to retain your data for a further period, failure to respond to this email will result in the deletion of your personal data.

Disclosure of your information

We may share your personal data with any member of our Group, which means its subsidiaries, and its ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006 (our “Group“) where there is a legal basis for doing so under data protection law and to meet stated legitimate business purposes.

We will only share your personal data with the following where there is a business need to do so and where there is also a clear legal basis under data protection law:

  • business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them. These include the provider of our telephone system; with the provider of our email marketing campaigns; our website hosting partners for the purposes of website administration and hosting services; and call centre partners which provide call centre services.
  • third party suppliers and service providers to the extent they assist the Group with its legal / regulatory obligations;
  • analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site and other selected third parties; and

We will disclose your personal data to third parties:

  • in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets;
  • if we, or substantially all of its assets, are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our customers will be one of the transferred assets;
  • if, subsequently to completing the flucamp.com webform, you explicitly provide additional consent for us to transfer your personal data i) to a named third party clinical trial provider for the purposes of enrolling on a clinical trial or ii) to hVIVO’s external partners/other external organisations for future research. From time to time, if we are unable to offer you a place on one of our trials, we will let you know about clinical trials provided by third party companies which we believe you may be eligible for. These communications will clearly outline that the trial is offered by a third party and ask if you wish for us to transfer your personal data to this provider for the purposes of participating on a clinical trial;
  • in the unlikely event of any insolvency situation (e.g. the administration or liquidation) of hVIVO PLC or any of its Group;
  • if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our website terms of use and other agreements or otherwise for the purpose of legal advice and/or proceedings; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of hVIVO, our customers, or others.

HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA PROTECTED?

Your personal data (including your sensitive personal data) is only shared with staff within our organisation and with any partners who work closely with us on a ‘need to know’ basis for our legitimate business purposes and access to databases and folders containing personal data is restricted to appropriate staff. We have implemented organisational and technical security measures to safeguard and protect against unauthorised access to your personal data.

Our suppliers are also required to agree to data protection measures to protect your personal data which includes the requirement for them to commit to only process individuals’ personal data consistent with contractual purposes and with appropriate technical and organisational security safeguards.

 

STORAGE AND TRANSFER OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

Most of the data that we collect from you is processed and stored securely by us within the UK. However, where your personal data is transferred outside of the UK, hVIVO will adopt the appropriate safeguards in compliance with the data protection laws in order to protect your privacy rights. Where a partner with whom we may need to share personal data has not received an adequacy decision, we protect this data with approved contractual mechanisms in accordance data protection law. .

Your rights

Data protection legislation provides you with certain rights in relation to this processing. You can, for instance, withdraw your consent to the processing of this personal data at any time (subject to some legal exceptions). However, this is likely to mean that you will not be able to continue with your application to participate in our clinical trials or remain part of other research-related projects for example, hVIVO’s Research Tissue Bank.

Your rights under law are not absolute and, in some instances, we may be unable to accept your request, in which case we will respond to you to explain why. These are set out below. You may contact us using the details on our website (or by contacting us directly – details below) to exercise any of these rights and we will respond to any request received from you within one month from the date of the request.

 

Please address any questions, comments and requests regarding our data processing practices to us in this way in the first instance. You can exercise any of the rights below by contacting us at the above email address.

NUMBER DESCRIPTION OF RIGHT
 Right 1  A right to access personal data held by us about you.
Right 2  A right to require us to rectify any inaccurate personal data held by us about you.
Right 3  A right to require us to erase personal data held by us about you.  This right will only apply where (for example): we no longer need to use the personal data to achieve the purpose we collected it for; or where you withdraw your consent if we are using your personal data based on your consent; or where you object to the way we process your data (in line with Right 6 below).
Right 4  A right to restrict our processing of personal data held by us about you.  This right will only apply where (for example): you dispute the accuracy of the personal data held by us; or where you would have the right to require us to erase the personal data but would prefer that our processing is restricted instead; or where we no longer need to use the personal data to achieve the purpose we collected it for, but you require the data for the purposes of dealing with legal claims.
Right 5  A right to receive personal data, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. This right will only apply where the processing is based on consent, or a contract (see above) and the processing is carried out by automated means.  You also have the right to require us to transfer this personal data to another organisation, at your request.
Right 6  A right to object to our processing of personal data held by us about you (including for the purposes of sending marketing materials to you).
 Right 7 A right to withdraw your consent, where we are relying on it to use your personal data (for example, where you have provided your personal data to us to apply for one of our clinical trials or where you have asked to receive marketing information about our services or products).

If you have any questions about hVIVO’s privacy policy, the data we hold on you, or would like to exercise one of your data protection rights, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

Should you wish to report a complaint or if you feel that Our Company has not addressed your concern in a satisfactory manner, you may contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Address:

First Contact Team

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

SK9 5AF

LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES

Please note that our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Changes to THIS privacy policy

Any changes to this privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to this privacy policy

This policy was last reviewed and updated:  June 2024