A key element in our approach to privacy at our company is our commitment to transparency in our privacy program. We aim to achieve this by providing clear and understandable notices of our privacy practices that enable our stakeholders to make meaningful choices about how we collect, use and disclose personal information about them. We offer both brief point of collection privacy notices and comprehensive privacy notices.
Our comprehensive privacy notices for certain categories of our stakeholders are listed below.
UK Privacy Notice for Healthcare Professionals
The following privacy notice is intended for Healthcare Professionals and explains how Merck Sharp & Dohme (UK) Limited also known as MSD may collect, use, and share information relating to your professional activities
Types of personal information collected
The data that we collect, verify and process is professional information about medical practitioners, pharmacists, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.
We hold the following information about healthcare professionals:
How we use your data to enable effective engagement:
We use your information to identify your professional specialties and areas of interest, for the purposes of inviting you to attend conferences, participate in other programmes and deliver educational materials about our product and services; this includes promotional activities that may be of interest to you. Additionally, we use this information to comply with all legal and regulatory obligations. This information will be used based on legitimate business interests, to assess how we can support you and further strengthen our relationship. We will also use your information to verify that you are a healthcare professional so we can meet our legal obligation to ensure we only market to healthcare professionals.
Other uses may also include some of the following:
Sharing your information:
Merck Sharp & Dohme (UK) Limited is a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA. We may share your information among MSD affiliates outside of the UK and Europe and will do so in accordance with our Privacy Policy and our Binding Corporate Rules (“BCRs”), which have been approved in the European Union. Your personal information may also be passed to other organisations for them to use but solely at the direction of MSD. Organisations that receive information from MSD will be contractually bound to only use this information in accordance with MSD’s instructions and in a manner that is consistent with all relevant data protection laws.
Retention:
Where we have had an interaction with you this will be retained for 3 years after our last interaction. Information may be retained for longer if we have a legal or regulatory obligation or where we have a legitimate interest to do so.
Your rights:
Subject to restriction in applicable law, you have certain rights with respect to your personal information, such as a right of access, correction, restriction of use, deletion, and portability. If you object to MSD processing your data, we will cease collecting and using your personal information; doing so will limit our ability to interact with you. MSD may still be required to process certain personal information about you in order to meet our legal or regulatory obligations.
If you choose to exercise your data protection rights you can submit a request using the Data Subject Request Form where you are able to request access, correct, or delete your personal information. If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact us at the following email address: msdukdpo@msd.com,alternatively you also have the option of contacting the UK Information Commissioners Office.
UK Privacy Notice for Policy and Communications Stakeholders and Partners
The following privacy notice is intended for Policy and Communications Stakeholders and Partners and explains how Merck Sharp & Dohme (UK) Limited, also known as MSD, may collect, use, and share information relating to your professional activities.
Types of personal information collected
The data that we collect, verify and process is professional information about the stakeholders and partners with whom we have contact and/or working relationships in our policy and communications activities.
We hold the following information about healthcare professionals:
How we use your data to enable effective engagement:
We use your information to understand your professional roles and areas of interest, for the purposes of discussing and implementing policy and communications projects, building and maintaining our knowledge of public policy or public affairs topics and sharing relevant information with you. Additionally, we use this information to comply with all legal and regulatory obligations. This information will be used based on legitimate business interests, to assess how we can support you and further strengthen our relationship.
Other uses may also include some of the following:
Sharing your information:
Merck Sharp & Dohme (UK) Limited is a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA. We may share your information among MSD affiliates outside of the UK and Europe and will do so in accordance with our Privacy Policy and our Binding Corporate Rules (“BCRs”), which have been approved in the European Union. Your personal information may also be passed to other organisations for them to use but solely at the direction of MSD. Organisations that receive information from MSD will be contractually bound to only use this information in accordance with MSD’s instructions and in a manner that is consistent with all relevant data protection laws. Personal information may also be passed to other organisations for them to use but solely at the direction of MSD. Organisations that receive information from MSD will be contractually bound to only use this information in accordance with MSD’s instructions and in a manner that is consistent with all relevant data protection laws.
Personal information may also be passed to other organisations for them to use but solely at the direction of MSD. Organisations that receive information from MSD will be contractually bound to only use this information in accordance with MSD’s instructions and in a manner that is consistent with all relevant data protection laws.
Retention:
Where we have had an interaction with you this will be retained for 3 years after our last interaction. Information may be retained for longer if we have a legal or regulatory obligation or where we have a legitimate interest to do so.
Your rights:
Subject to restriction in applicable law, you have certain rights with respect to your personal information, such as a right of access, correction, restriction of use, deletion, and portability. If you object to MSD processing your data, we will cease collecting and using your personal information; doing so will limit our ability to interact with you. MSD may still be required to process certain personal information about you in order to meet our legal or regulatory obligations.
If you choose to exercise your data protection rights you can submit a request using the Data Subject Request Form where you are able to request access, correct, or delete your personal information. If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact us at the following email address: msdukdpo@msd.com,alternatively you also have the option of contacting the UK Information Commissioners Office.
The data controllers responsible for the collection and processing of your personal information are as shown below:
HUMAN HEALTH
Merck Sharp & Dohme (UK) Limited
MSD R&D Innovation Centre Limited
ANIMAL HEALTH
MSD Animal Health UK Limited
Intervet UK Production Limited
MSD Animal Health Pension Trustee Limited
1. Legal Basis for Data Processing: We process personal information for the purposes set out in our Privacy Policy.
The legal basis to process personal information includes processing that is:
- Necessary for the performance of the contract between you and the entity (ies) listed above.,
- Necessary to provide you with the services you request and to identify and authenticate you so you may use our web sites;
- Necessary to comply with legal requirements (for example, to comply with applicable accounting rules and to make mandatory disclosures to law enforcement);
- Necessary for legitimate business purpose, for example, to manage our relationship with you; ensure security protection, to improve our web sites and our products and services or regulatory requirements such as pharmacovigilance;
- Based on your consent where relevant and as required by local regulations (for example, to communicate with you about our products and services and provide you with marketing information).
Where applicable, your consent can be subsequently withdrawn at any time by using the mechanism embedded in messages received or by contacting the Global Privacy Office. Subsequent withdrawal of your consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.
In some instances, you may be required to provide us with personal information as described above in order for us to be able to provide you all of our products and services, and for you to use some features of our web site.
2. International Transfers of Personal Information:
Your personal data may be disclosed as needed to MSD entities and third parties located in the United States and other countries outside of the European Union (EU) or European Economic Area (“EEA”), including in countries that may not provide the same level of data protection as your home country. We have implemented appropriate security and compliance mechanisms to ensure your personal information is protected as required and your rights are respected, such as APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules certification, Binding Corporate Rules (BCR), EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (DPF) program, the UK Extension to DPF and the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework program or EU approved data protection contractual clauses. Additionally, the recipients of your personal information are bound to duties of confidentiality through legally binding framework.
More information on these measures is described in our Cross Border Privacy Rules Policy and your rights provided by these can be obtained by contacting Global Privacy Office.
3. Profiling and Automated Decision Making:
We will inform you when we implement profiling mechanisms to customize information we provided to you or when we use automated decision-making technologies to support our data processing activities. Where applicable more information on the logic used to make such decision can be obtained by contacting the Global Privacy Office. You may as well exercise your right to object or require MSD expert review of such decision.
4. Your Rights:
In addition to the right to access or correct information, you may be entitled, in accordance with applicable law, to object to or request the restriction of processing of your personal information, and to request erasure and portability of your own personal information. Requests should be submitted by contacting the Global Privacy Office.
The link to Global Privacy Office can also be used for initiating inquiries and/or submitting complaints related to personal data processing or exercising specific rights provided by MSD’s BCRs as stated in our Privacy Policy.
If you have additional concerns with our use of your personal information or our response to any exercise of your rights you have the possibility to lodge a complaint to your local data protection Supervisory authority or local court as relevant.