Privacy Statement Introduction
Mr Murali Somasundaram is a Consultant General and HPB Surgeon providing surgical operations, consultations, treatments and procedures. He is the Data Protection Officer (DPO) for his practice.
This privacy notice is a statement by Mr Murali Somasundaram to patients, associated personnel, the general public and visitors to the website on how we collect, use, retain and disclose personal information which we hold as a consequence of the operation of our website, and the provision of our products and services. This privacy notice is part of our commitment to ensure that we process your personal information/data fairly and lawfully.
Please note that the privacy policy detailed here relates to the website operation and not the entire surgical practice of Mr Murali Somasundaram.
Changes to Privacy Policy
Updates will be required to our privacy policy on occasion if the law and/ or our business changes. We will aim to inform you in advance of this if your contact details are held by us. Relevant changes will be provided on the website and if you continue to use the site, we will take this as notice the changes have been accepted by you. Please therefore keep us informed of any personal data changes during accessing our services.
Information Collection
You will need to provide personal data to enable us to provide care and treatment for the majority of services. We will inform you when it is optional to provide this data. Where you have provided personal data, we may process this to enable us to deliver care. These records may include the below:
Name, address, contact details, date of birth, gender.
Please note that detailed information regarding medical background and financial information for payment will not typically be requested via the website.
Use of Personal Data
Your personal data will only be used by us when the law permits it. Such use of personal data might include:
Where we need to enter into an agreed contract with you Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
To work effectively with other organisations who may be involved in your care.
Keeping Information Secure
Information is retained in secure electronic and paper records and access is restricted to only those who need to know.
Technology allows us to protect information by restricting access. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and we will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
We can only keep your personal data for as long as necessary for the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting
requirements. The precise length of time we hold your personal data for varies depending on the individual circumstances, but in determining the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. We regularly review our retention periods to ensure that we are not keeping your data for longer than necessary.
Information Sharing
We may need to share information about you with others, such as a range of Health and Social Care organisations and regulatory bodies. You may be contacted by any one of these organisations for a specific reason; they will have a duty to tell you why they have contacted you. Information sharing is governed by specific rules and law.
User rights
Access: you may request access to your personal data, which enables you to receive a copy of the personal data that we hold about you and to check to see if we are processing it lawfully.
Transfer: you may request that we transfer your personal data to you or a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Please note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you
Rectification: you may request rectification of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
Erasure: you may request erasure of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
Object: you may object to how we are processing your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
Restriction: you may request that we restrict how we process your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you
have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Withdrawal of Consent: where we have relied on your consent to process your personal data you will have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you.
We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent. You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identify and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any personal who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
Contacting us about your information
Please contact us if you have any questions about our privacy policy or information we hold about you (pa@muralisurgeon.co.uk). You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.
Complaints
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), who is the supervisory authority for data protection issues in the UK (www.ico.org.uk/concerns).
Other websites
Websites may contain links to other websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites, plug-ins and applications and this privacy policy only applies to this website so when you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies.