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At The Indie Optician & Hearing Centre at Observatory, our optical practices and their staff are members of your local healthcare team. We aim to provide you with the highest quality of healthcare.
To do this, we need to keep records about you, your health and the care we have provided or plan to provide to you. We know that you value your privacy and the security of personal information held about you. This outlines our Privacy Policy.
Information collected may include:
• Basic details about you, such as address, date of birth, next of kin, contact numbers;
• Details of your spectacle or contact lens prescription;
• Details of glasses or contact lenses supplied to you;
• Other details and notes about your health and medical treatment;
• Records of medicines you have been prescribed by your doctor;
• Information relevant to your continued care from other people who care for you and know you well, such as other health professionals and relatives.
• Any other information you give voluntarily.
• Images from our CCTV operation.
As part of providing a professional, safe and efficient service, there is certain information that we record. This includes details about your ocular health, your general health, advice given and referrals made to other health professionals. This information won’t be shared with anyone else except under the circumstances described below in ‘Sharing Information’.
The information we collect about you is used to ensure that we provide you with the best and most appropriate products and services. In addition to your ongoing eye care, we will remind you when appointments are due and suggest relevant products or services that we believe would be of interest. We use your contact information to respond to queries from you, and where appropriate your bank details to collect Direct Debit payments as agreed. We may occasionally contact you to ask for your feedback on services we have provided and to offer the opportunity to trial new products. CCTV is used for the purpose of crime prevention as well as the protection of staff and property.
To provision and manage our services, your data is stored and processed by Visual Extreme within their UK facilities. Direct Debits, if taken, will be processed by us and by Lloyds, Barclays and RBS. Any third-party company is only permitted to process your data for the specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. Data is also stored on www.dropbox.com and www.idrive.com, each of which may have some servers outside of the EU.
We retain your information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide our products and services and to maintain records to satisfy legal requirements.
The information held about you will not be shared, unless:
• You ask us to do so;
• We ask and you give us specific permission.
The types of people we may ask you for permission to share information with include your doctors (GP and hospital) and other health professionals including the NHS. Anyone who receives information from us also has a legal duty to keep this information confidential, subject to recognised exceptions of the types listed above.
We may also pass information and/or CCTV images to external agencies and organisations, including the police, for the prevention and detection of fraud and criminal activity. Should any claim be made, we may pass personal information to our insurer.
You are entitled to access the personal information that we hold on you; any such request should be made using our contact details below. If any data we hold is inaccurate, this will be corrected promptly on request. In certain circumstances you can request that we erase your data which we will do where this would not prevent us meeting our legal and regulatory obligations.
You may ask that we do not send you communications using any of the contact details we hold on our records. This may include your email, SMS, telephone and postal information. You may also request that we restrict our communications to clinically necessary messages. Your personal preferences can be changed at any time by using our contact details below.
A cookie is a small text file containing information that a web site transfers to your computer’s hard disk for record-keeping purposes. A cookie cannot give us access to your computer or to your personal information. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies; consult your browser’s manual or online help if you want information on restricting or disabling the browser’s handling of cookies. If you disable cookies, you can still view the information on our website, but the functionality of certain areas may be reduced.
We reserve our right to make any changes and updates to this privacy policy without giving you notice as and when we need to. Our most up to date privacy policy is always available here on our website.
You can reach Observatory by email hello@indieoptician.co.uk, telephone 01702 719 335 or by post at Observatory, 33 Rectory Grove, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex SS9 2HA.
