Protecting your Personal Information

Introduction

This leaflet describes how Sequani Limited deals with the protection of your personal data. If you have any questions after reading this leaflet, please contact us.

Sequani Clinical

Sequani Clinical is the part of Sequani Limited that carries out clinical (i.e. involving people) Clinical product testing, which may involve pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, toiletries, household products, etc.

The Data Protection Act

The Data Protection Act 1988 provides you with certain rights when you supply personal information to organisations such as ourselves. It also demands good information-handling practices by those organisations who record and use that information – known as “data controllers”

As a data controller, Sequani is open about our use of personal information, and we follow proper practices in obtaining, holding, using and disclosing that information.

How does Sequani use your information?

All personal information provided by you, either when you enrolled on our volunteer panel or at a later date, is held on our computer system in a secure restricted access database. The information is only available to personnel within Sequani Limited who have been given access to the database because they need to use the information as part of their job. We use this information to select suitable candidates for our volunteer studies, and we also store information about which studies we have contacted you about and which studies you have taken part in.

The paper forms that you complete are kept only for a short time after entering the data onto the computer, and then are archived in a secure area with restricted access.

We may at some time need to contact your doctor to check on any treatment or medical condition that you have told us about. We will ask your permission to do this before we do this.   This type of information is known as ‘sensitive data’ under the Data Protection Act. Sequani has a confidentiality policy in place which means that medical information is held securely and access is limited to those persons who need to use the information as part of their job.

Sequani will not transfer any of your personal data to other companies for any purpose.

Data Obtained During Studies

All of the studies undertaken by Sequani will involve recording some personal information on forms, and in some cases this information may be printed directly from the database. In all studies your data  is made anonymous to outside organisations. Your information would be referred to only by initials, date of birth, and gender, which will allow us to identify you in our database, but will not allow you to be identified by anyone else.

Printed study reports containing the anonymous data are sent to our clients, who may submit them to regulatory authorities in support of statutory applications. It is unlikely that the data will be transferred in an electronic form as part of a computer database but this is a possibility. The data may be sent to countries outside the European Union where data protection laws are not as strict as here. You will be asked to give permission for any such transfer when you give consent to participate in a study.

What if your information changes?

Sequani have a duty to ensure that the data we hold on you is as up to date as possible. We may ask you to check your details on-screen whenever you visit Sequani Clinical, or we may write to you requesting confirmation of your details. Please notify us of any changes. You may inform us of any change in your information, or ask to be removed from selection for future studies, by contacting us.

What rights do you have under the Act?

You have the right under the Data Protection Act to obtain copies of all the personal information that we hold about you, with only a few exceptions. Under the Act we have the right to charge a fee for providing this information.

Sequani Limited registered in England No. 1008026