New Zealand Medical and Scientific Ltd Privacy Policy

New Zealand Medical and Scientific Ltd (“NZMS”) recognises the importance of protecting your privacy. Please read this policy carefully as it sets out our approach in relation to the management of personal information, including how we collect personal information, the purposes for which we use this information, to whom this information is disclosed, as well as how an individual may contact NZMS regarding our Privacy Policy.

In order to provide you with our products and services, including processing any orders you make through our website, we need to hold and process your personal information. By providing personal information to us for this purpose, and/or in using this website, you agree to the terms and conditions of this policy. If you choose not to provide us with personal information this may impact the extent to which we can provide our services to you.

1. What personal information may be collected

When we talk about your “personal information” we mean information or opinion about you which you have provided to us, you authorised us to collect from others or third parties who are authorised to disclose information about you to us. A reference to “personal information” in this policy also includes any information or opinion relating to your health.

We may collect contact details including your name, occupation, address, email address, phone number and your date of birth. We may collect answers you provide to questions we ask and other information in relation to your dealings with NZMS. If you purchase products from us, we may also collect certain transactional information and financial details to process the transaction.

In addition to the types of personal information identified above, NZMS may collect personal information as otherwise permitted or required by law.

2. How your personal information is collected

NZMS collects personal information that is reasonably necessary for or directly related to our functions and activities as a provider of medical devices. In some cases, we are required by law to collect personal information in order to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations under the Medicines Act 1981 and Medicines Regulations 1984.

Unless otherwise required or permitted by law, we will only collect your personal information from you and we will only use that information for the purpose for which it was collected. 

In rare circumstances, we may collect information about your health through third parties (e.g. from health care professionals, such as clinicians, who are treating you or your next of kin). We will only do this if you have consented or where otherwise permitted or required by law.  An example of where we might collect this information without your consent is if you are hospitalised and are unable to consent and we need to collect information about your use of our products either to assist the health care professionals treating you or to create an incident report to Medsafe.

Where NZMS needs to collect information about your health from a third party we will take reasonable steps to obtain your consent to the collection of this information before we collect the information from the third party.  If NZMS is not able to obtain your consent prior to collecting this information from a third party, NZMS will subsequently notify you that we have collected this information from a third party, where it is reasonable and practicable to do so.

If you are required to register in order to use NZMS’s website or to otherwise complete an online application form (e.g., to join a Loyalty Program) then NZMS will collect personally identifiable information about you, such as your name, e-mail address, and other information which you may voluntarily submit.  This information is collected for the purpose of improving and shaping our services and offerings to best support our valued customers. 

NZMS, or third parties NZMS uses to monitor traffic to and from its Website, may also automatically collect aggregated information about the users of our Website.  Aggregated information is a collection of information from all of the individuals who access NZMS’ Website from time to time. Examples of aggregated information are your device’s IP address, referring website, what pages your device visited, and the time that your device visited our Website. Aggregated information cannot identify you personally.

3. How your personal information may be used

NZMS will use your personal information for the purpose for which it is collected as outlined in this policy or otherwise disclosed to you at the time of collection, which includes the following purposes:

• For our day-to-day business operations and to interact and carry out transactions with you or your organisation.
• During the sale, distribution or provision of medical devices to you or your organisation.
• While providing support services in relation to those medical devices.
• To respond to your inquiries and requests.
• To provide you with information regarding our products and services via email alerts, Txt or Post.
• To verify your identity.
• For internal business purposes, such as improving our products and services offerings including and providing you with offerings about products and services that may be of interest to you.
• For compliance with regulatory requirements, such as maintaining a record of medical queries, complaints, adverse events and recalls relating to our products, as required by the Medicines Act 1981 and Medicines Regulations 1984.
• Any other purpose to which you provide express consent.
• Any other purpose required and permitted by law.

We may also use and disclose your personal information for the purpose of direct marketing to you where you have consented to us doing so or it is otherwise permitted by law. Direct marketing involves communicating directly with you for the purpose of promoting goods or services to you and to provide you with special offers. Direct marketing can be delivered by a range of methods including mail, telephone, email or Txt. You can unsubscribe from our direct marketing, or change your contact preferences, by contacting us (see contact details below).

4. Disclosure of your personal information

In order to provide you with our products and services, we may need to disclose your information to third parties including:

• Manufacturers and suppliers (in New Zealand or Australia or elsewhere overseas, as necessary) of any of our products that you or your organisation have purchased.
• Third party service providers (in New Zealand or Australia or elsewhere overseas, as necessary) such as IT services, courier companies, payment and credit card processing, and other such services;
• Your next of kin or family or health professional if your health professional advises us that you are incapacitated and we consider disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to assist your family, next of kin or health professional consider how to treat you;
• Government and regulatory authorities, where we are required to disclose personal information by law under the Medicines Act 1981 and Medicines Regulations 1984; and
• Our lawyers to enable us to take legal advice in respect of our obligations to you, relationship with suppliers or obligations under the Medicines Act 1981 and Medicines Regulations 1984.

We may also disclose information about you to anyone you authorise us to disclose that information to.

Individuals and overseas based entities that we disclose your personal information to may not be required to protect the information in a way that provides comparable safeguards to the Privacy Act.  Wherever reasonable and practicable NZMS will either limit the personal information disclosed to an overseas individual or entity to that which is absolutely necessary or will undertake to de-identify the information prior to its disclosure.

5. Use of Cookies

We use cookies to improve your experience on our Website.  Cookies are small files which are sent to your web browser and stored on your computer’s hard disk. Those cookies are set by us and called first party cookies. We also use third party cookies – which are cookies from third party websites for our advertising and marketing efforts.

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to:

• Track traffic patterns to and from our sites such as the pages you visit, the time you spend on each page, the date and time of your visit, where your mouse hovers, and referring pages (pages you came from or go to);
• Ensure advertising is being shown to the most appropriate person and limit the frequency of display for certain ad formats; and
• Enable you to use certain services as a member without having to log on each time and to visit member-restricted areas of the site.
• You can choose to refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser and/or deleting them from your hard drive. If you do this, you may lose some functionality on our website.  You may also need cookies for customisable areas of sites we may develop in the future. If your cookies are turned off, we will not have any control over the frequency of display of certain ad formats. This could affect your reading experience.

Visit http://www.aboutcookies.org for a comprehensive guide on how to control and delete cookies on a wide range of web browsers and operating systems.

NB: You will not be able to opt-out of any cookies or other technologies that are “strictly necessary” for the services NZMS provides.

6. Security

NZMS is concerned with the security of your Personal Information and is committed to taking reasonable steps to protect it from unauthorised access and use. To that end, NZMS has put in place appropriate physical, electronic and managerial policies and procedures to secure personal information. These policies and procedures include, but are not limited to: storing any electronic information on password protected and secure servers; ensuring any physical copies of personal information are kept in a secure area which is not open to unauthorised access; requiring NZMS employees to enter into confidentiality agreements requiring they ensure the security of personal information; and ensuring that any access to personal information by NZMS employees is limited to those employees with a need to know that information for the provision of products to the relevant individual.

7. Accuracy of Personal Information

NZMS is committed to ensuring that all personal information held is accurate, complete and up-to-date. To that end NZMS may from time to time contact you directly for the purposes of verifying your information.

8. Access to and Correction of Personal information

You have a right to know what personal information NZMS holds about you. You may request this by contacting NZMS by the following methods:

Phone: 09 259 4062
Email: nzms@nzms.co.nz
Mail addressed to:

Attention: NZMS’s Privacy Officer

New Zealand Medical & Scientific Ltd PO Box 132400
Sylvia Park
Auckland 1644
New Zealand

You also have a right to ask NZMS to correct any personal information we hold about you.

When requesting access or correction of personal information NZMS will require you to verify your identity by reference to your personal information. In some circumstances it may be necessary for you to visit NZMS’s location to properly verify your identity before access to personal information can be granted.

NZMS will respond to your request to access personal information as soon as is reasonably practical.  You may ask that your request to access personal information be treated as urgent.  To enable NZMS to consider the priority that needs to be given to responding to your request you will need to provide the reason why it is urgent.  If you do not provide a reason why your request is urgent, it is likely that NZMS will treat the request as non-urgent. 

When you request that NZMS correct your personal information, or at any time after this, you are entitled to provide NZMS with a statement of the correction to the information and request that we attach the statement of correction to the information if we do not make the correction you have sought.  If you provide us with a statement of correction and we do not correct the information, we will take reasonable steps to ensure the statement of correction is attached to your information.  What are reasonable steps will depend on the circumstances of each case.  These may be some circumstances which mean we cannot attach the statement of correction to your information.

9. Complaints

If you wish to make a complaint about NZMS’s collection, use or disclosure of any personal information, or about any potential breach of the Act or the Code, you may contact the Privacy Officer by use of the contact details at the end of this document.

When making a complaint you should include as many details as possible, including the nature of the personal information concerned, how it is you believe we have misused it, which provision of the Act or Code you believe we have breached (if relevant), the details of any NZMS employee or representative involved and any other information which may be relevant. The Privacy Officer may request additional information to enable the Privacy Officer to properly investigate the complaint and take such reparatory action as necessary.

Once a complaint is received the Privacy Officer will investigate the circumstances of the complaint and determine whether a misuse of personal information has occurred and if so, how it may be rectified and whether/what action should be taken in relation to any NZMS employee or representative involved, and whether serious harm has occurred which triggers the privacy breach notification regime under the Act. NZMS will endeavour to keep you informed regarding the process of your complaint and any action taken.

Should you not be satisfied with NZMS’s handling of \your complaint then we will generally agree to the complaint being referred to mediation and/or arbitration. Should the matter remain unresolved then you are entitled to refer your complaint to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in New Zealand.

10. General

Please take the time to review this policy regularly as we may review it and make changes to reflect changes in legislation, codes of practice, our business and the products and services we provide to you.

If you have questions regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact NZMS’s Privacy Officer by the following methods:

• Phone: 09 259 4062
• Email: nzms@nzms.co.nz
• Mail addressed to:
  New Zealand Medical & Scientific Ltd PO Box 132400
  Sylvia Park
  Auckland 1644
  New Zealand