Surrey Clinical Trials Unit privacy notice

As a clinical trials unit within a university we use identifiable personal data which may include special categories of personal data to conduct research to improve health, care and services. As a publicly-funded organisation, we have to ensure that it is in the public interest when we use identifiable personal data from people who have agreed to take part in research. This means that when you agree to take part in a research study, we will use your data in the ways needed to conduct and analyse the research study. Your rights to access, change or move your information are limited, as we need to manage your information in specific ways in order for the research to be reliable and accurate. If you withdraw from the study, we will keep the information about you that we have already obtained. To safeguard your rights, we will use the minimum identifiable personal data possible.

Health and care research should serve the public interest, which means that we have to demonstrate that our research serves the interests of society as a whole. We do this by following the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research.

When you agree to take part in a research study, the information about your health and care may be provided to researchers running other research studies in this organisation and in other organisations. These organisations may be universities, NHS organisations or companies involved in health and care research in this country or abroad. Your information will only be used to conduct research in accordance with the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research. It will not be used to make decisions about future services available to you, such as insurance. The lawful basis under which we process your data will depend on the nature and details of the research project you participate in but will be made clear to you in the information we provide to participants. Personal data may be processed because it is in the public interest and/or with your consent and special category personal data may be processed with your explicit consent and/or because it is necessary for scientific or historical research in the public interest.

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact our Data Protection Officer who will investigate the matter. If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data in a way that is not lawful you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Further information can be found at https://www.surrey.ac.uk/information-governance