SHARD DIAGNOSTICS™ Privacy Policy

Privacy policy

This privacy policy gives you information about how SHARD DIAGNOSTICS Ltd collects and uses your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide when you purchase a product or service.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

Controller

SHARD DIAGNOSTICS Ltd is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as "shard-dx", "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy policy).

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights (paragraph 9), please contact the us using the information set out in the contact details section (paragraph 10).

Personal data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified.

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

· Identity Data includes first name, last name, any previous names, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.

· Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.

· Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.

· Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.

· Profile Data includes, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.

· Usage Data includes information about how you interact with and use our website, products and services.

· Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We also collect, use and share aggregated data such as statistical or demographic data which is not personal data as it does not directly (or indirectly) reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate individuals' Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature in order to analyse general trends in how users are interacting with our website to help improve the website and our service offering.

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

· Your interactions with us. You may give us your personal data by filling in online forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:

· apply for our products or services;

· request marketing to be sent to you;

· give us feedback or contact us.

· Automated technologies or interactions. We do not utilise cookies.

· Third parties or publicly available sources. We will receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:

· Technical Data is collected from the following parties:

· analytics providers such as Google based outside the UK;

· advertising networks such as LinkedIn; and

· Contact, Financial and Transaction Data is collected from providers of technical, payment and delivery services.

· Identity and Contact Data is collected from data brokers or aggregators.

· Identity and Contact Data is collected from publicly available sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the UK.

Legal basis

The law requires us to have a legal basis for collecting and using your personal data. We rely on one or more of the following legal bases:

· Performance of a contract with you: Where we need to perform the contract, we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.

· Legitimate interests: We may use your personal data where it is necessary to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, for example to prevent fraud and enable us to give you the best and most secure customer experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights (both positive and negative) before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

· Legal obligation: We may use your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to. We will identify the relevant legal obligation when we rely on this legal basis.

· Consent: We rely on consent only where we have obtained your active agreement to use your personal data for a specified purpose, for example if you subscribe to an email newsletter.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below, a description of all the ways we plan to use the various categories of your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

How We Use Your Personal Data

We collect and use your personal information for the following purposes:

a) To register you as a new customer customer

We use your identity and contact details to create your account and set you up as a potential customer. This processing is necessary to take steps towards entering into a contract with you for our products or services.

b) To process and deliver your orders

This includes managing payments, fees, and charges, and collecting or recovering any money owed to us. We use identity, contact, financial, transaction, and marketing and communications data for this purpose. Processing is necessary to perform our contract with you for our products and services, and for our legitimate interests in recovering debts owed to us.

c) To manage our relationship with you

This includes notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy, and responding to your requests, complaints, or queries. We use identity, contact, profile, and marketing and communications data for this purpose. Processing is necessary to perform our contract with you, to comply with our legal obligations, and for our legitimate interests in keeping our records up to date and maintaining good customer relationships.

d) To enable your participation in competitions, prize draws, or surveys

We use your identity, contact, profile, usage, and marketing and communications data to allow you to participate in these activities. Processing is necessary to perform our contract with you and for our legitimate interests in understanding how customers use our products and services, developing them, and growing our business.

e) To administer and protect our business and website

This includes activities such as troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting, and hosting of data. We use identity, contact, and technical data for these purposes. Processing is necessary for our legitimate interests in running our business, providing administration and IT services, maintaining network security, preventing fraud, and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise. It is also necessary to comply with our legal obligations.

f) To deliver relevant website content and advertisement

We use identity, contact, profile, usage, marketing and communications, and technical data to show you content and adverts that are relevant to you and to measure or understand the effectiveness of our advertising. Processing is necessary for our legitimate interests in studying how customers use our products and services, developing them, growing our business, and informing our marketing strategy.

g) To use data analytics to improve our website and services

We use technical and usage data to help us understand how our customers interact with our website and communications, so we can measure their effectiveness and make improvements. Processing is necessary for our legitimate interests in defining types of customers for our products and services, keeping our website updated and relevant, developing our business, and informing our marketing strategy.

h) To send marketing communications and personalised recommendations

With your consent, we use identity, contact, technical, usage, profile, and marketing and communications data to send you updates, offers, and personalised suggestions about goods or services that may be of interest to you. Processing is based on your prior consent to receive direct marketing communications, which you can withdraw at any time.

i) To carry out market research

If you choose to take part in our surveys, we use the information you provide to understand how customers use our products and services and to help us improve and develop them. Processing is necessary for our legitimate interests in gaining insights from customers to enhance our products and services.
Direct marketing

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased goods or services from us and you have not opted out of receiving the marketing.

We may also analyse your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view which products, services and offers may be of interest to you so that we can then send you relevant marketing communications.

Third-party marketing

We will get your express consent before we share your personal data with any third party for their own direct marketing purposes.

Opting out of marketing

You can ask to stop sending you marketing communications at any time by contacting us at info@shard-dx.com.

If you opt out of receiving marketing communications, you will still receive service-related communications that are essential for administrative or customer service purposes for example relating to order confirmations for a product/service warranty registration, appointment reminders, updates to our Terms and Conditions, checking that your contact details are correct.

Cookies

We do not utilise cookies.

We may share your personal data where necessary with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in section 4 for which we will use your personal data as described in section 4.

· Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

If we transfer your personal data out of the UK to countries which have laws that do not provide the same level of data protection as the UK law, we always ensure that a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring that the following safeguards are implemented:

We use specific standard contractual terms approved for use in the UK which give the transferred personal data the same protection as it has in the UK, namely the International Data Transfer Agreement.

We may transfer your personal data to service providers that carry out certain functions on our behalf. This may involve transferring personal data outside the UK to countries which have laws that do not provide the same level of data protection as the UK law.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK to service providers, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring that the following safeguards are in place:

· We may use specific standard contractual terms approved for use in the UK which give the transferred personal data the same protection as it has in the UK, namely the International Data Transfer Agreement.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine 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, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see paragraph 9 below for further information.

In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

You have a number of rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.

You have the right to:

· Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

· Request correction 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.

· Request erasure of your personal data in certain circumstances. 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 to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) as the legal basis for that particular use of your data (including carrying out profiling based on our legitimate interests). In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your right to object.

· You also have the absolute right to object any time to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes (see OPTING OUT OF MARKETING in paragraph 4 for details of how to object to receiving direct marketing communications).

· Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to 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. 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.

· Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in one of the following scenarios:

· If you want us to establish the data's accuracy;

· Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;

· 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

· You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us by email at info@shard-dx.com.

No fee usually required

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 could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity 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 person 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.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could 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.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or about the use of your personal data or you want to exercise your privacy rights, please contact us in the following ways:

· Email address: info@shard-dx.com

· Postal address: Biocity Nottingham, Pennyfoot Street, Nottingham, NG1 1GF

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated on 01/01/2025.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us, for example a new address or email address.

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on 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 and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.