Medical Research Grants Privacy Policy

Who we are:

We are Heart Research UK, a UK registered charity. Our charity number is 1044821 and we are also registered as a limited company in England and Wales under company number 3026813.

Our head office address is: Suite 12D, Joseph’s Well, Leeds, LS3 1AB

You can contact us in writing at the above address or by emailing info@heartresearch.org.uk. If you would prefer to speak to us, please call us on 0113 234 7474.

What personal information we process:

We collect and store the following kinds of personal data:

• Personal data that you provide to us.
  We collect personal data directly from you when you make an application for a Medical Research Grant. This is information which you provide when you complete the Grant Application Form and when you submit information to support your application. This includes your name, your place of work, your work contact details such as your email address or telephone number. We will also usually ask you to submit a copy of you CV and you may also be asked to provide us with information about your grade and salary as part of your application.
• Personal data that we receive from others.
  If we receive an application form from someone in your team or department or if you are put forward as a co-applicant or collaborator for a specific Grant Application, they may share with us some personal information about you such as your name, contact details, grade and salary details. They may also share a copy of your CV with us.

Your name and contact details may be shared with us by colleagues in the research community who have suggested you if they think you may be interested in helping us review applications or joining one of our expert Medical Review Panels.

• Personal data which is the public domain.

When looking for new medical experts to work with, we also do our own desk research and may collect your personal data as part of this process if it is publicly available.

• Personal data about your use of our website.
  This is technical information and includes details such as your IP address,  your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, as well as details of how you navigated to our website and where you went when you left, what pages viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs). We may also process alongside your personal information details the progress of any Grants Applications you have made or Grants Applications you are helping us to assess.

How we use your information:

• We use the personal information provided by you in the following ways:
  • to process and review and award our Research Grants.
  • to provide you with the information and services that you request from us.
  • to provide you with marketing information (see How we use your personal data for marketing).
  • to approach scientific experts who we think are qualified to review grant applications.
  • to manage and administer the charity.
  • to review and improve our services.
• Personal data that we receive from third parties is combined with the personal data that you provide to us and used for the purposes described above.
• Personal data about your use of our website is used:
  • to administer our website and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes
  • to improve our website to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer or mobile device.
  • as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure.

Cookies:

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our website. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them see our Cookie policy which will pop up when you visit our website (www.heartresearch.org.uk)

When we need your consent to use your personal data:

Whilst we always want you to be aware of how we are using your personal data, this does not necessarily mean that we are required to ask for your consent before we can use it.  In the day to day running of our business we may use your personal data without asking for your consent because:

• we are entering into and carrying out our obligations under a contract with you (such as when you apply for a Medical Research Grant)
• we need to use your personal data for our own legitimate purposes (such as the administration and management of the charity and the improvement of our services) and our doing so will not interfere with your privacy rights.

In exceptional circumstances we may wish to use your personal data for a different purpose which does require your consent.  In these circumstances we will contact you to explain how we wish to use your data and to ask for your consent.  You are not required to give consent just because we ask for it.  If you do give consent you can change your mind and withdraw it at a later date.

 Personal data you are legally obliged to provide:

You are not under a legal obligation to provide us with any of your personal data but please note that if you elect not to provide us with your personal data, we may be unable to provide our services to you.

Your rights to know what personal data we hold and to control how we use it:

You have a legal right to know what personal data we hold about you – this is called the right of subject access.  You can exercise this right by sending us a written request at any time. Please mark your letter “Subject Access Request” and send it to us at info@heartresearch.org.uk  or using postal address details in the Who we are section of this policy.

You also have rights to:

• prevent your personal data being used for marketing purposes (see How we use your personal data for marketing for further details)
• have inaccurate personal data corrected, blocked or erased.
• object to decisions being made about you by automated means or to your personal data being used for profiling purposes.
• object to our using your personal data in ways that are likely to cause you damage or distress.
• restrict our use of your personal data.
• require that we delete your personal data.
• require that we provide you, or anyone that you nominate, with a copy of any personal data you have given us in a structured electronic form such as a CSV file.

You can find full details of your personal data rights on the Information Commissioner’s Office website at ww.ico.org.uk.

Please note that we do not make use of automated decision making or profiling.

When we will share your personal data with others

We share your data with the following people in the day to day running the charity:

• external reviewers and expert Medical Review Panel members who help us evaluate applications.
• any partners, suppliers and sub-contractors we work with to provide you with goods or services that you have requested from us.
• analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site.

We also share information about grants awarded with the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) for analysis and reporting purposes. Whilst we may share your personal information with AMRC for analysis purposes (personal information may be use for de-duplication and disambiguation screening purposes, such as establishing co-funding between two organisations), AMRC do not make public any personal data and only publishes aggregated statistics derived from member data. To find out more about the ways in which AMRC uses personal data, you can view their privacy policy here.

We may also share your personal information with third parties on a one-off basis, for example, if:

• we sell or buy any assets (including our own), in which case we will disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such assets.
• 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 terms and conditions and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our ourselves or others.

How we keep your personal data safe

We take every care to ensure that your personal data is kept secure.  The security measures we take include:

• only storing your personal data on our secure servers and or approved systems
• encrypting any data collected through our website using SSL technology.
• ensuring that our staff receive regular data security awareness training.
• keeping paper records to a minimum and ensuring that those we do have are stored in locked filing cabinets on our office premises.
• maintaining up to date firewalls and anti-virus software to minimise the risk of unauthorised access to our systems.

Please remember that you are responsible for keeping your passwords secure. If we have given you (or you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. Please do not to share your passwords with anyone.

Unfortunately, sending information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of personal data sent to our website; you send us personal data at your own risk. Once we have received your personal data, we will use strict procedures and security features (some of which are described above) to try to prevent unauthorised access.

How we use your personal data for marketing

We will add your details to our marketing database if you:

• Make an enquiry about a Medical Research Grant.
• Make an application for a Medical Research Grant.
• Volunteer or have previously volunteered to help us review applications or are a member of our expert Medical Review Panels.
• Have told a third party that you would like them to pass us your contact details so that we can send you updates about what we do.
• Have registered on our website.
• Have previously indicated that you would be happy to hear from us.

We may send you occasional communications by email or post to keep you informed about what we do and ways in which you can support us. You can ask us to only send you marketing communications by particular methods (for example, you may be happy to receive post from us but not emails), or you may ask us not to send you any marketing communications at all.
You can check and update your current marketing preferences at any time by calling or emailing us using the details set out in the Who we are section above.
We never share your personal data with third parties for marketing purposes.

When we will send your personal data to other countries

Your personal data may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the UK or European Economic Area (“EEA”) by us or by our sub-contractors.
Where we, or our sub-contractors, use IT systems or software that is provided by non-UK companies, your personal data may be stored on the servers of these non-UK companies outside the EEA.  We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

How long we keep your personal data:

We only keep your personal data for as long as we actually need it.  Please note that we may anonymise your personal data or use it for statistical purposes.  We keep anonymised and statistical data indefinitely, but we take care to ensure that such data can no longer identify or be connected to any individual.

How you can make a complaint:

If you are unhappy with the way we have used your personal data please contact us to discuss this using the contact details set out in the Who we are section above.

You are also entitled to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office which you can do by visiting www.ico.org.uk.  Whilst you are not required to do so, we encourage you to contact us directly to discuss any concerns that you may have and to allow us an opportunity to address these before you contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.

How we keep this policy up to date:

We will review and update this policy from time to time. This may be to reflect a change in the goods or services we offer or to our internal procedures or it may be to reflect a change in the law.

The easiest way to check for updates is by contacting us (see Who we are) to ask us to send you the latest version of our policy.

Each time we update our policy we will update the policy version number shown in the footer of the policy and the date on which that version of the policy came into force.

This is policy version 1. which came into effect on January 26^th, 2021.