This privacy notice is part of your agreement with us. During our interactions, you share personal information with Vertice Healthcare (Pty) Ltd, registration number: 2017/393121/07 (“Vertice”).
When we use the words us, we or our we mean Vertice.
When we use the words you, me or I we mean the individual whose personal information we collect and process.
This notice tells you what to expect when we collect and process your information. It is part of our agreement with you, and we may need to update it occasionally, but we will inform you when we do. You should read this notice along with the terms and conditions that apply to the products and services you use.
We collect your information when you interact with us.
Personal information is information relating to you that can be used to specifically identify you, such as:
- Your name.
- Telephone number.
- E-mail address.
- Date of birth.
- Identity number or other national identifier.
- Account number.
- Any other information that can identify you.
Vertice is a medical device company, and we may need your information to provide our products or services to you. Sometimes we are required by law to collect your information; for instance, health legislation requires us to collect personal information.
When do we collect personal information?
- When you create an online profile
We collect your information when you create an online profile. Some of the fields are mandatory. If you don’t complete all the required fields, you will not be able to create a profile. We will prompt you if this is the case.
- When you contact us, we collect information from your message
When you contact us by social media, email, telephone, or online chat with a query, complaint, or request, we collect the information included in your message. We use the information we collect to reply to, investigate, and resolve your query, complaint, or request.
- When you contact us for information on products or services
We use the information we collect to reply to, investigate, and resolve your request.
- When you take part in a survey
You may choose to supply your name and contact details when you take part in one of our surveys, although you always have the option to take part anonymously. We may use this information to give you feedback about the survey.
- In the course of engaging in commercial transactions with our customers, vendors and other business contacts and associates
How do we process your personal information?
We may process your personal information:
- In any way to which you consent.
- To respond to your requests and enquiries.
- To perform a contract or for contract negotiations with or about you.
- To develop records, including records of your personal information.
- To contact you by mail (or in other ways with your permission) with information that might interest you, including information about clinical trials and products and services of ours and others.
- For analytical purposes and to research, develop and improve programmes, products, therapies, services and content.
- To remove your personal identifiers (your name, e-mail address, identity number, etc.). In this case, you would no longer be identified as a single unique individual. Once we have de-identified information, it is non-personal information and is not subject to this Statement of Privacy Principles.
- To personalise your access to our websites, for example, by telling you about new features that may interest you.
- To enforce this Statement of Privacy Principles and otherwise protect our rights or property.
- To protect your vital interests or someone else’s health, safety or welfare.
- To comply with a law, regulation, court order, or other legal obligation.
- For our other legitimate interests, unless such processing unfairly prejudices your rights or freedoms.
What about children’s information?
- You must be older than 18 to use our services or products. When you use our services or products, we will ask you to confirm that you are older than 18. We do not knowingly collect the personal information of children without the consent of a parent or guardian. If we target a child with a product or service, we will ask for consent from the child’s parent or guardian.
What about special personal information?
- This is personal information revealing or relating to your health (such as your device serial number, or the date of an implant), your racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, political affiliation, or trade union membership; or criminal behaviour to the extent such information relates to an alleged commission of any offence or any proceedings in respect of any offence allegedly committed or disposal of such proceedings.
- We will only collect and process such information:
- If you have given explicit consent.
- To protect your vital interests, in cases where your explicit consent cannot be given or reasonably requested.
- According to national law.
- Where the processing is necessary for medical purposes and we are, under the circumstances, under a duty of confidentiality equivalent to the duty of confidentiality of a health professional.
- To establish, exercise, or defend a legal claim.
- Where the information has deliberately been made public by you.
- We may collect special personal information about patients from our customers, vendors, or other business contacts when we provide you with therapy or technical support for our products or services.
- We may collect special personal information about patients when we receive questions and suggestions about our products and services.
- We may collect special personal information as required by certain governmental authorities to assure the safe and effective use of our products and services.
- We may collect special personal information about participants in clinical trials, studies, and other research initiatives.
- We may collect special personal information directly from you when you voluntarily provide it.
We share your information with trusted service providers.
- We use suppliers and service providers whom we trust to assist us in providing our services and products to you. They have agreed to keep your information secure and confidential, and to only use it for the purposes for which we have sent it to them.
- Here are some of the instances when we share your information:
- To store information.
- To manage our social media interactions.
- To help monitor the effectiveness of our promotions and advertising.
- To help us manage our business, for instance, accountants and professional advisors.
- To provide IT services.
- To maintain our website.
We will not sell, exchange or publish your personal information, except in conjunction with a corporate sale, merger, dissolution, or acquisition.
The privacy principles of our websites.
- Our websites may contain links to websites operated by other parties. We provide the links for your convenience, but we do not review, control, or monitor the privacy practices of websites operated by others. We are not responsible for the performance of websites operated by third parties or for your business dealings with them. Therefore, whenever you follow a link from our website to another website, even to another site operated by us, we recommend you review that website’s privacy practices.
- We may use cookies on our websites. Cookies are text files we place in the browser files of your computer when you visit. The cookies may be stored on your computer’s hard drive. The information that we collect using cookies is non-personal information. You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, but some parts of our websites may not work correctly for you if you do so. We do not allow third parties to place cookies on our websites.
Disclosure and sharing of information.
- Sometimes we will be required by law to share your information. For instance, we may be required to share your information with the South African Fraud Prevention Services.
We send your information to other countries.
- Some of the service providers that we use may be located in other countries, such as our cloud storage service. These countries may not have the same levels of protection of personal information as South Africa. If this is the case, we require that they undertake to protect the personal information of our customers to the same level that we do.
We will not keep your information longer than we need to.
- We will not retain your information for longer than necessary unless we are legally required to do so.
We have taken reasonable steps to minimise the impact of a possible breach.
- We have implemented reasonable security measures based on the sensitivity of the information we hold. These measures are in place to protect the information from being disclosed, from loss, misuse, and unauthorised access, and from being altered or destroyed.
- We regularly monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks. Still, no system is perfect, and we cannot guarantee that we will never experience a breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards. If something should happen, we have taken steps to minimise the threat to your privacy. We will inform you of any breaches affecting your personal information and how you can help minimise the impact.
- You also have a role to play in keeping your information secure. For example, you should never share personal information with us in an email, because while our servers are protected, it is still possible that the email can be intercepted. Instead, contact us at the telephone number: +27 12 997 3954.
You have the right to be informed about the personal information we have, and what we do with it.
- You have the right to know what kind of personal information we have about you, to correct it, and to opt out of marketing.
You have the right to:
- Ask us what we know about you.
- Ask what information was sent to our suppliers, service providers, or any other third party.
- Ask us to update, correct, or delete any out-of-date or incorrect personal information we have about you.
- Unsubscribe from any direct marketing communications we may send you.
- Object to the processing of your personal information.
Access to your information.
- You can request access to the information we have about you or correct your personal information by contacting our information officer. It can take us up to 14 days to respond to your request because there are procedures that we need to follow. In some instances, we may require proof of your identity, and sometimes changes to your information may be subject to additional requirements, such as valid proof of residence.
Our information officer’s details are as follows:
Pieter Ferreira, Head: Legal and Compliance.