Website Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy sets out how Healthcare Excellence Canada collects, uses and discloses personal information obtained through our website https://www.healthcareexcellence.ca and during our online activities.
Healthcare Excellence Canada collects limited personal information through its website and online activities including participation on social media. Healthcare Excellence Canada also collects personal information via our third-party electronic newsletter service provider when people express an interest in receiving the Healthcare Excellence Canada publications, news releases, and e-mail bulletins. Personal information may be obtained from people who attend Healthcare Excellence Canada -sponsored events such as workshops, seminars and related events, and otherwise in the course of Healthcare Excellence Canada’s program delivery as described below. Such information may be stored on servers located outside Canada, including in United States of America. Where personal information is stored outside of Canada it is subject to the laws of that foreign jurisdiction, and may be accessible to that jurisdiction’s government, courts, or law enforcement or regulatory agencies.
Please read this notice carefully to understand our policies and practices for processing and storing data. By engaging with our website and otherwise providing your personal information to us while using our services, you accept and consent to the practices described in this notice. This notice may change from time to time (see Changes to the Privacy Policy). Your continued engagement with our website and with Healthcare Excellence Canada after any such revisions indicates that you accept and consent to them, so please check the notice periodically for updates. If you do not agree to terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy, you should discontinue your use of this website immediately.
Healthcare Excellence Canada does not sell, share or distribute your personal information, except as described in this notice or at the time of collection, or as permitted or required by applicable laws. Unless outlined in this Privacy Policy or as otherwise permitted by applicable law, no personal information is collected without first obtaining your consent, which may be implied when you provide information to us with knowledge as to how we will use it, or express, as required by applicable laws.
Generally, Healthcare Excellence Canada will use and/or disclose your personal information without your consent only when permitted or required by applicable law, including to comply with any court order, law, or legal process or respond to any lawful government or regulatory request.
Automatically Obtained Information
Our servers collect and store information such as the IP address from which you access our websites, your browser type, the date and time you accessed the site, the internet address of the website that you came from, and cookie information as further described below.
Cookies
A cookie is a file that is written to your hard drive when you access a website. We use cookies to improve user experience, personalize your access to content of our websites to your interests, ensure data security and understand general traffic patterns. This information may be used to guide enhancements in site structure. It may also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a program or publication.
From time to time, Healthcare Excellence Canada uses Facebook and Twitter tracking pixels and Siteimprove pixel for web optimization. From time to time, Healthcare Excellence Canada also uses Google Remarketing to advertise its programming on other websites using cookies. You may opt out of the use of cookies for re-marketing purposes by visiting the Google site here: https://adssettings.google.com/
Information collected includes, but is not limited to, data to track frequency of visits, pages visited, web browser used, and city of web visitor.
Healthcare Excellence Canada tracks its website usage via Google Analytics to help inform its programming and marketing activities. If you wish to be excluded from Google Analytics data collection, you can download its Opt-Out Browser Add-On, which is accessible here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
We note that Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter own and operate data centers around the world. To find out more about their data center locations and privacy policies, please see the following links:
https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/index.html.
https://www.facebook.com/policy.php
https://twitter.com/en/privacy
https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875
https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy
We note that, where personal information is stored outside of Canada, it is subject to the laws of that foreign jurisdiction, and may be accessible to that jurisdiction’s government, courts, or law enforcement or regulatory agencies.
Applicant Information and Registration Data
Healthcare Excellence Canada also collects limited personal information from individuals who make requests to Healthcare Excellence Canada for information or who register with one of our websites. Personal information collected for these activities is used only for the purpose that it is collected and is not generally used or disclosed for any other purpose, except where permitted or required by applicable law or with your consent. Healthcare Excellence Canada, in support of its communities’ privacy, does not otherwise share its mailing lists, in whole or in part, with any organization regardless of their affiliation with Healthcare Excellence Canada, unless permitted or required by law.
Information collected may include name, email, organization, title and document requested. If you elect to register with one of our websites, you will be required to disclose your contact information, including name, defined user name, a password, email address, phone number, address, personal preferences and interest topics (the “Registration Data”). Registration does not result in Healthcare Excellence Canada collecting any personal information other than that which you provide through completion of the registration. You can deactivate or make changes to your user account at any time. To deactivate or make changes to your account, contact info@hec-hsc.ca. Please note that usernames cannot be changed.
Applicant information and Registration Data are stored on Healthcare Excellence Canada’s web servers located in Canada and outside Canada, including in the United States of America. Where personal information is stored outside of Canada it is subject to the laws of that foreign jurisdiction, and may be accessible to that jurisdiction’s government, courts, or law enforcement or regulatory agencies. We may, in compliance with applicable privacy laws, transfer personal information we have if we merge with or are acquired by a third party or should a third party acquire all or part of our business or should any such transaction be proposed.
We use applicant information and Registration Data to administer our websites and provide our services. We may also use the data when utilizing third party service providers (including vendors or suppliers that provide us with technology, services, and or content for the operation and maintenance of our websites) when necessary to permit those service providers to provide products or services to Healthcare Excellence Canada. Access to personal information by the service providers is limited to the information reasonably necessary for the party to perform its function for Healthcare Excellence Canada. We disclose such personal information if necessary, to comply with applicable laws, to enforce our Terms of Use or where otherwise permitted by applicable privacy laws.
Program Information
The Healthcare Excellence Canada requires its partners, program applicants and other agents of the organization to provide certain personal information about themselves and their team members involved with projects, programs, awards or applications for which funding and/or other support is sought. Such information may include, but is not limited to, curriculum vitae, contact information, academic affiliation, gender, language and area of work. The Healthcare Excellence Canada may solicit comments from reviewers and committees for review of applications, commissioned reports and other similar type of products which may include comments respecting the suitability, expertise and qualifications of the project participants either individually or collectively.
The Healthcare Excellence Canada uses personal information provided in connection with program applications to review such applications, to administer, monitor awards and to promote healthcare improvement in Canada. As part of the review process, application information may be disclosed to independent reviewers drawn from the healthcare improvement sector including academic, private and public sectors. All these individuals are informed of the Healthcare Excellence Canada’s obligations to protect such information.
The Healthcare Excellence Canada may publish or otherwise disclose in its communications including, but not limited to, press releases and on its web site, personal information relating to approved projects, funding and/or other support, and reports for which funding and/or other support has been approved, as well as programs, partnerships, projects, program applications, and events. The purpose of these communications is to publicize the projects, awards, and/or reports that are supported by Healthcare Excellence Canada and/or to promote healthcare improvement. Such disclosure/publication may include but is not limited to personal information relating to team leads, team members, authors, award holders, and funding partners, including but not limited to name, title, institution, affiliations (where applicable) and field of work. With their specific consent, where permitted or required by law, or where the information is already available through other means, Healthcare Excellence Canada may also disclose comments provided by them, with attribution. If specific consent has not been obtained for disclosure of comments in advance, identifiable information is only disclosed with specific consent after consultation with the Vice-President, Organizational Performance and Corporate Services or if the information is already publicly available through other means.
Information contained in memoranda of understanding, purchase of service contracts, program applications, or in job applications will only be disclosed for statistical purposes or, in the case of program information, to potential funding partners or funding agencies for the purposes of program or project administration.
The Healthcare Excellence Canada may use information provided to it in connection with program applications and commissioned reports to identify potential reviewers.
The Healthcare Excellence Canada also uses personal information provided in memoranda of understanding, program applications and commissioned reports for purposes of internal management, administration and evaluation requirements. In this regard, the Healthcare Excellence Canada may use and disclose personal information for program planning, evaluation and review, in audits, and for generating statistics for these activities.
Personal Information Processing on Behalf of Partners
As part of its operations, Healthcare Excellence Canada may enter into agreements and partnerships with various organizations that require Healthcare Excellence Canada to process personal information or personal health information provided by those partners, while delivering services to those partners. In such circumstances, the processing of such personal information or personal health information by Healthcare Excellence Canada on behalf of its program partner is governed by the agreements between the parties, and not by this Privacy Policy.
Electronic Correspondence
Subscriber information for our email bulletin and registration information for Healthcare Excellence Canada events is stored on a secure server. Healthcare Excellence Canada uses a third-party provider for this service, with the third-party service provider performing analytics that evaluate the effectiveness of a publication and to help inform the marketing activities that it performs on our behalf.
Information collected may include name, email, open rates, click rates, browsers used, and unsubscribe rates. This information is stored by our third-party provider in the United States and the third-party provider provides services to us from the United States. We note that where personal information is stored outside of Canada it is subject to the laws of that foreign jurisdiction, and may be accessible to that jurisdiction’s government, courts, or law enforcement or regulatory agencies.
Public Communities
Some communities are open for the public to join without restrictions. Please remember that any information disclosed by you in these communities becomes public information. Exercise caution in disclosing your personal information when participating such communities.
External Links
Our website includes links to other organizations’ websites solely for information and convenience. Other websites are governed by privacy policies and practices that may differ significantly from those of the Healthcare Excellence Canada. We strongly recommend that you review the privacy policies and practices application to personal information collected through a linked website before submitting any personal information. We are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices of other sites.
Security
The security of your personal information is very important to us. We use physical, electronic, and administrative safeguards designed to protect your personal information from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, use, alteration or disclosure. Following are examples of our security procedures used to protect your personal information:
- Our website uses industry-standard SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption to protect data.
- We use firewalls to protect information held in our servers in a secured data centre.
- We monitor the limited number of employees who have potential access to your personal information.
- We require our employees to comply with our privacy policy.
We caution that, while we endeavor to secure your personal information, no network, system or server is 100% secure.
Requests for Managing Personal Information
Request for access to or correction of your personal information or to withdraw your consent, or any questions or concerns that you may have about the treatment of your personal information, should be directed to the Vice-President, Organizational Performance and Corporate Services as follows:
Healthcare Excellence Canada
Attention: Vice-President, Organizational Performance and Corporate Services
150 Kent Street, Suite 200
Ottawa, ON
K1P 0E4
Telephone: 613-728-2238
Email: privacy@hec-esc.ca
Changes to the Website Privacy Policy
This Website Privacy Policy may be changed by the Healthcare Excellence Canada at any time without notice and accordingly you should review the Website Privacy Policy regularly. You will find the date of the last revision of the Website Privacy Policy at the bottom of the page.
Revision Date: March 1st, 2021
