The Whipps Cross Waltham Forest Medical Education and Research Trust (WxWF MERT) complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2016/679 and takes all reasonable care to prevent any unauthorised access to your personal data. WxWF MERT respects your privacy and is committed to safeguarding the confidentiality of your personal information. This policy explains how and why WxWF MERT collects and uses the personal information of its customers and website visitors, and how the WxWF MERT protects your privacy.

When disclosing your personal information to us by completing and submitting electronic forms or `Expressions of Interest` to us, you consent to the collection, storage and processing of your personal information as stated in this policy.

The personal information that we collect from you shall be obtained, processed and transmitted in compliance with applicable data protection legislation – European Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) and, as our offices are located in the United Kingdom, the British Federal Data Protection Act (DPA) and the Data Protection Ordinance (DPO) laws. Per the European Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR), `Personal Information` means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural; an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person. This general policy is in addition to any specific policies concerning specific products or services. It may be amended at any time so we invite you to visit this page regularly for updates.

How WxWF MERT collects personal information

WxWF MERT is a registered charity which combines a range of activities in the field of Medical Education and Research, including:

  • Organisation and provision of World Class of Medical Training Courses
  • Grants for Improvement and Research activities
  • Grants for high quality postgraduate courses.
  • Grants to aid in the publication of research in high profile journals
  • Provision of other educational products and services

This may require the handling of personal information of the individuals involved in these activities and hence WxWF MERT collects personal information in a number of ways from a number of sources. This information may be communicated to WxWF MERT on paper forms received through the postal services, or electronically through registration on WxWF MERT Website and use of WxWF MERT’s online funding request services or through other electronic forms made available through partner websites or electronic mailings.

The sources of personal information received by WxWF MERT are:

  • The individuals themselves
  • Third parties acting on behalf of individuals (e.g. an agent arranging registration or hotel accommodation for an WxWF MERT organised meetings or events)
  • Partner Societies providing details of their Members.

As per Article 14 of the European Regulation 2016/679, where we receive personal information about individuals from sources other than the individuals themselves (e.g. for WxWF MERT funding request or meeting registrations), we will take all practical steps to contact the person concerned to advise of their rights.

The principal ways in which WxWF MERT collects personal information are:

  • When you register personal details when creating or updating an ‘WxWF MERT’ account on the WxWF MERT Website
  • When you, or an agent or other third party acting on your behalf, enter personal details on a form requesting an WxWF MERT product or service (e.g. when registering for an WxWF MERT organised Course/Meeting)
  • When you, or someone on your behalf, submits proposals or content in connection with WxWF MERT funding request (e.g. applicants supervisor information)
  • When you enter details on a specific application for an WxWF MERT Grant or other awards.
What personal information is collected by WxWF MERT
Personal information you provide us with
Mandatory Personal Information

As a general rule, the following minimum information must be provided in order for your order, request, application, etc. to be processed.

  • Nominative Information – Title, First Name(s), Family Name(s): Your nominative details are needed to properly identify you, to communicate with you, to provide you with the products and services you have requested and to ensure that items are properly labelled as yours (e.g. meeting badges and scientific contributions such as presentations, etc).
  • Full Postal Address: The Postal Address is needed when items will be sent to you by post or when you purchase something generating an invoice.
  • Date of Birth: Your date of birth is used to help us correctly identify you and avoid duplicate records and, where specific fees or charges apply which depend on age, to determine eligibility for these fees.
  • Email address: Your email address is needed because it is used as part of the login information (to access your ‘WxWF MERT Account’ personalised area on WxWF MERT website) and is necessary in order to communicate with you and provide you with order/request confirmations. Finally, it permits `Reset Password` to be handled in an automated secure way.

Additional personal information, which is mandatory for persons creating an ‘WxWF MERT Account’ on the WxWF MERT website is:

  • Emailing Preference: We ask you to advise us whether or not you wish to receive marketing emails from WxWF MERT. This is so that we can respect your privacy as regards electronic communications, as required by European and British laws.
  • Profile Information: We ask you for optional information about your;
    o Professional Activity
    o Place of Work
    o Fields of Interest
    o Areas of Expertise
    o Social Media links

to enable us to provide you with more relevant information and to better understand the preferences of our audience so that we can give a better service generally.

Other Personal Information

Other information may be requested which is necessary or relevant for specific activities.

Mandatory information for specific purposes

  • Credit Card information is required for anyone wishing to make payment by this method. You have the choice to save these details, securely, for later use or not.
  • Curriculum vitae, list of publications and other evidence of scientific achievement is requested to support WxWF MERT Grants and Research Awards.
  • Affiliation information (to an organisation) is required for all persons wishing to submit an Abstract and for Membership applications.
  • Professional status (together with proof) is requested for all persons requesting certain fees (e.g. specific registration fees for meetings and events)
Optional information
  • Telephone – to enable us to contact you rapidly in case of need
  • Subscriptions to eNewsletters and email notifications enable you to request to receive regular WxWF MERT newsletters and email alerts on selected Medical Education Courses.
Information we collect automatically

When you visit WxWF MERT Websites, information is collected in an automated manner about your computer/device, your IP address, the referring website, what pages you visit, how long you stay on them and the general use you make of the website.

When you make use of our services (purchase a subscription, registration or membership or consume an educational product), we keep track of this activity in logs.

This information is collected using various technologies which includes saving cookies to your computer or device. For more information on our use of cookies, the information we collect with them, and your preferences please refer to our Cookies policy.

During our meetings, attendees, exhibitors, guests and others may be photographed and videotaped by WxWF MERT or its partners capturing the event. Some of these photographs or videos may be displayed by WxWF MERT or its partners in future publications, on the website or in materials connected with the event as well as social media. If you do not wish for your image to be displayed by WxWF MERT, please step away or ask the photographer not to be photographed. Without contradictory instructions from your side, you hereby grant the Whipps Cross Waltham Forest Medical Education and Research Trust (WxWF MERT), the irrevocable rights to record and use free of charge, on a worldwide basis and for the entire duration of protection of the rights thereto, on any and all supports or forms of media, your image, voice, name, photographs, and video on which you appear for purposes related to Scientific, Educational or Promotional Purposes. You hereby release, waive and discharge the Whipps Cross Waltham Forest Medical Education and Research Trust (WxWF MERT), its employees and independent contractors from any and all demands, claims, causes of action, damages and liabilities directly or indirectly arising out of any use of your image, voice or name pursuant to the foregoing rights grant.

How WxWF MERT uses personal information

Personal information is needed by WxWF MERT to enable it to properly manage its member and customers to fulfil its role in providing a wide range of services.

The personal information which you supply may also be specifically used to:

  • Setup your personal `WxWF MERT` account
  • Provide you with an online `WxWF MERT space` where you can provide/review/edit your personal information
  • Process an application for an WxWF MERT grant or other awards.
  • Process a registration for an WxWF MERT meeting, meeting, course and other event (both at a physical location or online). Meeting badges, online access to courses, etc and certificates of attendance also require the nominative information supplied.
  • Handle attendance at a social event at a WxWF MERT meeting, meeting or other events.
  • Process registration(s) or hotel request(s) for another person(s) if you are acting on behalf of a third party or parties.
  • handle scientific programme activities in connection with WxWF MERT meetings and meetings. These include abstract submission and grading process, speaker and chairperson management, handling of agreement forms, preparation of the scientific programme, presentation management onsite, publication of the scientific content on WxWF MERT website.
  • Manage access to restricted content on WxWF MERT website (certain resources are only available to board members).
  • Enable individual communications with you about specific matters – e.g. sending confirmations, receipts, requesting further information to solve queries, responding to WxWF MERT Helpdesk Requests, etc. and sending emails to you with information about WxWF MERT activities which we believe will be of interest to you (subject to your prior consent to receive WxWF MERT generated emails).
  • Send electronic newsletters and notifications (alerts) to you (where you have subscribed to receive them).

The information we collect automatically is used to:

  • Enable us to improve our website and ensure the content is presented to you in the most optimal way. We analyse our user’s activities on the Websites to deduce what works well, what needs to be improved on and what is of little value to our visitors which allows us to focus on the main areas to ensure you have a pleasant experience on our Websites.
  • Provide you with personalised suggestions and recommendations on our websites and e-communications customised to your usage of our website.
  • Promote our activities in a coherent and adequate manner.
How long personal information is kept

Your personal ‘WxWF MERT account’ is only kept for a reasonable period of time, dependent upon the nature of the information and its intended use, but subject to a maximum of five years after your last use of an WxWF MERT product or service.

For certain specific uses (e.g. leadership positions, award certifications, etc.) are kept for varying amount of times according to the process involved. Should you wish to know how long your personal data will be kept for specific processes, please contact us.

For accounting purposes, invoices and expense claims are kept for 10 years in our systems.

Email addresses

Electronic communication is for most purposes WxWF MERT’s preferred method of communication because it is generally convenient, rapid, effective and efficient. In order to be able to communicate with you directly electronically, WxWF MERT needs your email address. You are therefore required to supply your email address when you create your ‘WxWF MERT’ account on WxWF MERT Website, which enables you to access a variety of services online.

Unique Email Address

For your convenience and security, your email address is unique to you in the system. (WxWF MERT does not permit two different persons to have the same email address in the system). You are strongly recommended to use an email address which is personal to you and that is not shared with others. This is to ensure that communications which are sent to you personally are not read by others, and that others do not gain access to the information in your ‘WxWF MERT’ account. Additionally, the unique email permits handling of ‘Forgot Password’, enabling you to reset your password in an automated and secure way using your personal email address.

Email privacy

WxWF MERT respects the privacy of personal email addresses and complies with the current European legislation on email communication. The objective is not to send you unwanted messages, and your email details will not be passed on to any other individual or organisation without your permission for marketing purposes.

You can manage the extent to which WxWF MERT communicates with you by using the Privacy and Data Protection preferences section in the ‘Contacts’ section of your ‘WxWF MERT’ account. Here you are asked to indicate whether or not you wish to receive WxWF MERT generated emails. If you decide that you do wish to receive email communications from WxWF MERT you can select to opt out of marketing communications. All mailings sent to you offer the possibility to unsubscribe.

If you indicate that you do not wish to receive WxWF MERT generated emails you will only receive emails directly related to the transactions you have with WxWF MERT(e.g. confirmations of registrations, etc.) and other necessary individual communications required to fulfil our contractual obligations.

Disclosure of information to third parties

WxWF MERT does not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to others. WxWF MERT may supply your information to its contractors to perform specific services such as, for example, the mobile app suppliers who supply guidelines, recommendations and meeting applications, CRM service providers (e.g. EventsAir), email service providers (e.g. Microsoft 365), banking and merchant partners, and others.

Otherwise, WxWF MERT does not disclose personal information to any other person or organisation without your consent. In this context, your personal data may be disclosed to the following external partners of WxWF MERT in the circumstances described below:

  • Meeting exhibitors who scan your meeting badge: If you accept to have your badge scanned when visiting an exhibiting company stand, or by a hostess at an Industry Sponsor session, your badge will enable them to retrieve the following personal data: nominative (title, first name(s), last name(s)), address (postal address and email), telephone, fax and profile information (professional activity, place of work and fields of interest).
  • Agencies handling WxWF MERT managed hotel bookings: Nominative information is provided to local agencies where WxWF MERT handles hotel bookings for a particular meeting or event. (The large majority of hotel bookings are now made directly with the hotel but there may be occasion when some faculty and Committee members may still be handled this way).
  • Groups representatives and Agencies handling your meeting or event registration: Where your registration is handled by someone other than yourself, your confirmations, badges or vouchers may be sent to this third party. These contain nominative details about you.
  • WxWF MERT assessing applications for WxWF MERT Grants or other awards: An application for a WxWF MERT Grant or other award requires the submission of appropriate career and other information to support the application. This information is made available to the committee of specialists responsible for assessing the applications and making the awards.
  • Affiliated / partner societies or organisations: when collaborating on joint activities or projects approved by the WxWF MERT Executive Board.

Right of access to, rectification and/or erasure of your WxWF MERT information

In accordance with section 2 of the third chapter of the European Regulation 2016/679 with regards to data protection, you have the right to request from WxWF MERT, access to and rectification or erasure of your personal data or restriction of processing concerning your data or to object to processing as well as the right to data portability.
For such, please contact (together with a proof of identity):

Data Privacy
Whipps Cross Waltham Forest Medical Education and Research Trust
by email hello@whippscrosswf.com

You have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, and for information, WxWF MERT has appointed a Data Protection Officer that you can reached at caroline@openaudience.co.uk

When you visit your ‘WxWF MERT’ account you have direct control over the information in your personal profile. You can access and change this information at any time from your ‘WxWF MERT’ account.

Note that an opposition or deletion request once treated will not delete all trace of financial transactions which need to be kept, for accounting purposes, for a duration of 10 years.

Data security

To protect your information, WxWF MERT uses an industry standard security protocol called Transport Layer Security (TLS) to encrypt the transmission of sensitive information between you and our Websites. To know if transmissions are encrypted, look for the lock on your web browser or check that the URL starts with https://.
Unfortunately, no company or service can guarantee complete security. Your account is protected by a password for your privacy and security. We strongly suggest you prevent unauthorised access to your account by selecting and protecting an appropriate password and limiting the access to your computer and devices. To assist you in ensuring security, we require a complex password be set to access your account which must comprise of at least 8 characters including letters, numbers and special characters. After 10 wrong password attempts, your account will be locked.

Please note that WxWF MERT will never ask you for your personal details, password or credit card details by email. We advise you to be vigilant and apply caution. All transactions should go through your secure WxWF MERT area.

Payment collection

Payment collection is made securely through our banking partner, Stripe or Paypal accounts, a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) certified organizations. PCI-DSS is an information security standard that has been created by the major credit card companies (American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard and Visa) to improve controls around credit card data handling and to reduce fraud.

In order to be certified, providers undergo regular assessments by external parties: Penetration testing, vulnerability assessment and audit by an external Qualified Security Assessor (QSA).

If you have requested to save your payment details, only the credit card type, last 4 digits and expiration dates are stored in our CRM. The full details are only kept by Stripe or Paypal, our financial partners, on their secure servers.

Use of cookies and other tracking technologies

Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to your computer’s hard disk for record keeping purposes. They are small text files that a website can use to recognise repeat users and facilitate their ongoing access to, and use of, the site. They do not pose a threat to your system or files.

Our websites do work without cookies, but you will lose some features and functionality if you choose to disable cookies. In particular, if you do choose to disable cookies, you will not be able to enjoy the full range of online services available through your ‘WxWF MERT ’ account area or any of the restricted content. For full information on our use of cookies and how to accept/reject them, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

We also use clear gifs in our email marketing communications which is used to track the emails that are opened by the recipients. This information allows us to have accurate reports and improve the effectiveness of our marketing and make our services and Websites better for you.
Finally, we utilise web analysis services to better understand your use of our Websites and services. These services collect information such as what pages you visit, how long you stay on them and where you came from before visiting that page. This information is used to examine the use of the Websites as well as potentially your actions to contextualise and personalise some of our content to your personal interests.

External Links

WxWF MERT Website contain links to other websites. Please be aware that WxWF MERT is not responsible for the privacy policies of other sites. You are therefore encouraged to read the privacy policies of any other site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy policy applies solely to information collected by WxWF MERT.

‘WxWF MERT’ Account – Managing your contact with WxWF MERT
Access to Personalised Services

You do not need to register to access most of WxWF MERT Websites, but you do have to register to use personal services online and access certain web content.

The details you supply WxWF MERT may be combined with information from other WxWF MERT records to:

  • provide you with online services like Registration for Meetings, funding applications etc.
  • save you having to keep giving the same information for different WxWF MERT services
  • help you to get more out of WxWF MERT by keeping you up to date about WxWF MERT activities, scientific developments, and products and services by email. (Note: This is an ‘Opt-In’ service only – for more information, please go to the section Email Addresses)
  • Access to your personal information

Your ‘WxWF MERT ’ account enables you to manage your personal information held by WxWF MERT . If you are a Member of WxWF MERT  or have used WxWF MERT products and services, a record will already exist for you which you can potentially access by logging in online through:

  • Use of your existing login details (email and password), if you have already used WxWF MERT online services (‘WxWF MERT ’ account) previously.
  • If you forget your login password, email hello@whippscrosswf.com and request a password reset.
  • Use of a special alternative reset login functionality is available for a 2hr period.

Last updated 19 March 2019