The right to be informed

We are committed to ensuring that you know exactly how and why your personal data is being used by us. You should understand our reasons for collecting your data, how it is used, the length of time it is held and who it is shared with. 

The right of access

You have the right to be informed if any of your data is being held by us. You also have the right to request access to any and all information relating to you that is on our systems. This includes but is not limited to: personal data, contact information, financial data, grant or committee applications, email communication.

This information will be provided to you in a standard, machine-readable format, and free of charge. However, we reserve the right to request a fee if the request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, particularly if it is repetitive.

We will endeavour to provide you with the information within a month of the date of your request. If we are unable to provide the data within the specified timeframe, we will inform you and the information will be provided within a further two months at the latest.

We are endeavouring to make as much as possible of our held data accessible to you in the MyBSH section of the website. This should eventually include your contact details, communications preferences, subscription status and payment details.

We may require that you provide proof of identity prior to the release of your personal information.

The right to rectification

We wish to ensure that any information that we hold is correct and up-to-date. You can at any point request that we rectify incorrect information by sending us an email at [email protected], or by sending a letter to us at the address at the top of this page.

We will rectify your information within a month and contact you to confirm the update. 

In instances where an error has been made, we may retain the original incorrect information for historical purposes. For example, if a member is incorrectly charged the wrong amount, we will keep a record of the error and show how the issue was resolved.

The right to erasure

You have the right to request that any and all information relating to you be removed from BSH systems. This includes but is not limited to: personal data, contact information, grant or committee applications, email communication.
Please note that we are required by law to retain certain information, and may not be able to delete all data pertaining to you.

The right to restrict processing

You may request that we restrict the processing of your data. This is an alternative to requesting the erasure of data and will most likely be exercised if you wish to contest the accuracy of the information that we hold, or if you wish for data to be erased but we have a legal obligation to retain it. This means that we will continue to hold your data, but not use it in any way during the restriction period.

The right to data portability

Should you wish to move, copy or transfer your personal data to another service, we will provide all of the information in a safe and secure way. To request a portable copy of your data, please contact us at [email protected] or by post at the address at the top of this page.

The right to object

You have the right to request that we stop processing your data outside our contractual obligations.

As we do not perform any form of profiling, this primarily applies to those receiving direct marketing. You can opt-out of all non-official communications through any of the following means: updating your communications preferences in MyBSH, hitting the "unsubscribe" button at the bottom of our communication, or contacting us directly at [email protected] or by post at the address at the top of this page.

Please note that as data processing is necessary for the provision of our services, you may no longer be able to access general or contractual benefits if you object to our processing.

The right to withdraw consent

Where your information has been processed under the basis of consent, you can at any point withdraw your consent. This includes things like Sounding Boards comments, SIG membership, images and videos, and more. 

To withdraw your consent, you can contact us by post at the address above, or by email at [email protected]

The right to complain

If you believe that we have used or collected your data inappropriately, you can contact us at [email protected] or by sending a letter to the Data Protection Officer at the address above. We will review and respond to any complaints that we receive.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (the UK data protection regulator).  For further information on your rights and how to complain to the ICO, please refer to the ICO website.

Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling

We do not carry out any automated decision making or profiling.

Your data and how we use it

We collect the following information, either from you directly through use of our services, a form on our website, an interaction with our support team, or through your interaction with our processors (see "Who we share your data with" for more information):

• Name and title
• Contact details (including home, correspondence or professional address, email addresses and phone numbers)
• Date of birth (used for identification purposes)
• Gender identity
• Ethnicity
• Qualifications 
• Professional details (including organisation, position and department)
• BSH event attendance
• Subscription and event payment history 
• Trainee end year (Trainees only)
• Special interests and communications preferences

If you apply for a membership category with restricted eligibility (Associate, Full Reduced), you may be asked to substantiate this with documentation. Any documentation provided will be stored in our encrypted membership database, and will not under any circumstances be shared with any external entity.

As a general rule, we do not seek to collect or use sensitive information about you (for example, religion, sexuality, health status). However, if you have applied for discretionary BSH membership rates, or if you have attended an event and provided any access or dietary requirement information, by providing us with those details you will have consented to us recording them and using them for the expected purpose. For more information on event attendance, see the event delegate section below.

The information above is processed to fulfill our contractual obligation to you as a member. This enables us to communicate with you in the way you want, about what you want. It also means that we can deliver services or benefits to you, as well as consider how we could improve the way that BSH operates.

We work with our digital election coordinators (see CES in "Who we share your data with") to track voting participation for demographic purposes. This data is used solely to measure engagement in different segments such as location, age and membership type.

Your age, gender, ethnicity, qualifications or professional information may be anonymised and collated as part of our census measures. We do this to  understand our membership in order to develop and improve our services.

Data on your ethnicity may be used to provide anonymised reports to

1. Monitor and review the equality and diversity of Committee members compared to the membership.  

2. Monitor and review the equality and diversity of speakers invited to Education events, courses, and to the ASM

3. To enable BSH to be a national nominating organisation (NNO) for the National Clinical Impact Awards.   

For information on what data is collected when you access our website, please see the "Website Users" section below.

How your data is shared, and with whom

The following information will be shared with...

The reviewing panel (comprised of members of the Board of Trustees) will receive the following information: your full name, your country of residence, the name of your proposer, the category of membership applied for, your qualifications, your current job title, grade, NHS trust (if relevant) and date of appointment, and any previous haematology posts held.

Our event organisers Conference Partners International (CPI) - If you attend one of our events or our annual conference, certain information will be shared with CPI, who helps coordinate our events. For further information, see "Event delegates" below, or CPI's privacy notice.

Our election coordinators Civica Election Services (CES) - If you have voting rights in Society elections (Full or Full Reduced members), we will share the minimum necessary contact details with CES to fulfil our contractual obligations under the Companies Act and in our Regulations. For members with email addresses, this includes your membership ID, title and full name. For members without email addresses, this includes your membership number, title, full name and mailing address. Mailing data will be held by CES for 3 months, after which it will be securely erased. You can find more details in Civica's privacy policy.

Our membership research coordinators Research by Design (RbD) - RbD assisted us in 2020 with surveying our members ensure our membership was fit for purpose and to identify where we could improve our support to you and other members. If you were a member in September 2020, your membership number, membership type, devolved nation and region were provided to RbD so that they could personalise the survey to you and your circumstances. For those who took part in the survey, we also provided the following demographic details to RbD: gender, age, current position. RbD processed the data only for the exclusive purpose of our survey, and erased all member personal data when the project completed. You can find more information on RbD's privacy policy.

Our BJH distributors John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (Wiley) - If your membership includes access to the BJH, we will share your delivery and contact information with Wiley, who organises delivery of the print copies of the BJH. Wiley will only use your information or contact you with regard to your BJH subscription. You can find more information in Wiley's privacy policy.

Our direct debit collectors Debit Finance Collections Plc (DFC) - See the "Direct debit" section below in "Financial Information".

Our Joint Membership partners European Hematology Association (EHA) - If you opt for the BSH-EHA Joint Membership, we will share only the information necessary to allow them to fulfil their contractual obligation to you. This information includes your name, title, date of birth, contact email, organisation name and postal address. We will also share essential subscription information with EHA: whether your subscription has been paid and notification of termination should you wish to cancel your joint membership. You can find more information on how EHA processes your data in EHA's privacy policy.

How long your data is kept

Should your application be unsuccessful, we will retain your application details for three years before erasure.

If you become a member, your information will be kept for the length of your membership plus seven years. We are legally required by the HMRC to retain financial information for seven years, and at this stage we do not have the technical capacity to automatically separate financial vs other information. Once we do, we will set up a process whereby non-essential data is deleted at an earlier stage.

Administrative communication is anything that is integral to your Membership.

This includes renewal and direct debit notices, changes to the membership categories or prices, changes to your subscription and contact about outdated details.

We will always default to sending these notices by email, but we will also communicate this information to you by post if we do not have an up-to-date email address for you. As administrative communication is necessary to fulfill our contractual obligations to you as a Member, it is not possible to opt out of this communication.

Official communication is anything that we are required to send to you as under the Companies Act 2006. 

This can include:

• Nominations for the Board
• Notice of General Meetings
• Notice of Signed Accounts 

This information will be sent to you by post by default; to provide your consent to receive this material electronically, please email us at [email protected], or complete the consent form and return it to us by post or email.

Elective communication is anything that does not fall into the two categories above.  This includes the monthly member updates, messages from the Board, Guidelines notifications and news about events, grants and awards.

All elective communication is sent by email; you can update your desired email address on your MyBSH page, or in the Contact Us section.

You can modify your communication preferences at any point by logging in to your MyBSH and specifying exactly what communication you wish to receive. If you experience any difficulties accessing your MyBSH page, you can also contact us at [email protected]

If you have ceased to be a member, we may continue to contact you with non-administrative communication for up to one year of your membership ceasing. This contact is based on legitimate interest, and will only be done if we believe that there has been a change in our services or products in which you may be interested.

You can opt-out of this non-administrative communication by unsubscribing at the bottom of our email, or by contacting us at [email protected]

Financial information

Payment online

Our online payment solutions are carried out using a "payment gateway" (Opayo), which is a direct connection to a payment service provided by a bank. This means that when you input card data into the payment page, you are communicating directly with the bank and the bank passes your payment to us.

This means that the bank handles your payment card information and not processed or held by us. The only information retained on our systems is:

• Result of payment (success or failure)
• Time of payment
• Name of payer
• Value of payment

We process and hold this information to fulfil our contractual obligation to you, and our legal obligations to the HMRC.

Opayo uses a range secure method such as fraud screening, IP address blocking and 3D secure V2. Once on the Opayo platform, all sensitive data is secured using the same internationally recognised 256-bit encryption standards.

Opayo is PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliant to the highest level and maintains regular security audits. It is also regularly audited by the banks and banking authorities to ensure that its systems are impenetrable.

Opayo is an active member of the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) that defines card industry global regulation.

Payment by direct debit

If you set up a direct debit to pay your membership subscription, you will provide your personal, contact and bank details to our direct debit collectors DFC through the direct debit sign-up form hosted on their website.  

Where your information is outdated (e.g. if you change banks or move house) and your direct debit is still active, we may supply the correct information to DFC to ensure it is able to continue legally and successfully collecting your direct debit.

We do not share any other personal information of yours with DFC, and we do not hold or process any of your financial information on our systems.

DFC will only use your information or contact you concerning your direct debit, and will erase your information once it is satisfied that it has fulfilled its record-keeping obligations under the Direct Debit Guarantee. Please see DFC's privacy policy for more information on its commitment to data protection.

Payment by bank transfer

When paying for your subscription by bank transfer, you instruct your bank to transfer funds to our bank (Coutts). 

At no point is any of your financial information processed or held by us. The only information retained on our systems is:

• Date of payment
• Payment reference 
• Value of payment

We process and hold this information to fulfil our contractual obligation to you, and our legal obligations to the HMRC.

We keep financial data for seven years to comply with HMRC requirements, and once this date has passed, all your information will be erased.

For yourself

We collect the following information, either from you directly through use of our services, a form on our website, an interaction with our support team, or through your interaction with our event organisers, Conference Partners International (CPI):

• Name and title
• Organisation
• Position
• Email and postal address
• Contact number
• Gender
• Dietary and accessibility requirements

If you are a BSH member, this information will be consolidated with your member record to ensure your details remain up-to-date.

Our event organisers CPI — If you attend one of our events or our annual conference, the information above will be shared with CPI, who helps coordinate our events. For further information, see CPI's privacy notice.

For other delegates

By registering a place for someone else on the event via our booking form, you are confirming that you have received the permission of the other delegate(s) to share their information with us, and to be contacted by us and CPI regarding their booking on our event.

Collection and retention of data

We collect the above information to ensure that we are able to fulfil our contractual obligation to you as an event delegate. Your email, postal address and contact number are collected to ensure we can communicate with you when required or post delegate packs to you when necessary.

Your organisation, department, gender and position are anonymised and provided to our event organisers, which enables them to analyse attendance and improve the service provided to delegates.

Your information will be retained for seven years to ensure that we comply with our legal obligations, including HMRC tax requirements.

For information on what data is collected when you access our website, please see the "Website Users" section below.

You will receive communication from us or CPI that is relevant to the event for which you register. This will include:

• Details of the event;
• Notification in case of any changes to the event;
• Documentation or information relevant to the content of the event, such as PowerPoint slides from the event, or suggested reading before or after the event;
• Survey requesting feedback, which is used to improve future events.

You may opt out of receiving the feedback survey at any point by contacting our event organiser at [email protected].

You may also receive information about future events similar to an event you attended in the past on the basis of legitimate interest. You can opt out of these emails by emailing [email protected]. We are currently in the process of establishing a method for all event delegates to opt-in at registration, at which stage we will no longer contact delegates on the basis of legitimate interest.

We process and hold this information to fulfil our contractual obligation to you, and our legal obligations to the HMRC.

Payment online

Our online payment solutions are carried out using a "payment gateway" (Opayo), which is a direct connection to a payment service provided by a bank. This means that when you input card data into the payment page, you are communicating directly with the bank and the bank passes your payment to us.

This means that your payment card information is handled by the bank and not processed or held by us. The only information retained on our systems is:

• Result of payment (success or failure)
• Time of payment
• Name of payer
• Value of payment

We process and hold this information to fulfil our contractual obligation to you, and our legal obligations to the HMRC.

Opayo uses a range secure methods such as fraud screening, IP address blocking and 3D secure V2. Once on the Opayo platform, all sensitive data is secured using the same internationally recognised 256-bit encryption standards.

Opayo is PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliant to the highest level and maintains regular security audits. It is also regularly audited by the banks and banking authorities to ensure that its systems are impenetrable.

Opayo is an active member of the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) that defines card industry global regulation.

Payment by bank transfer

Occasionally delegates may be asked to pay via bank transfer if they are unable to pay using the secure Opayo online payment solution. In this instance, you instruct your bank to transfer funds to our bank (Coutts). 

At no point is any of your financial information processed or held by us. The only information retained on our systems is:

• Date of payment
• Payment reference 
• Value of payment

Protecting the privacy and personal data of people who attend our Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) is very important to us. The following explains how we use any information you give to us and how we protect your privacy. This statement covers the use of data provided when booking to attend both a face-to-face ASM or a virtual ASM.

If for any reason you give us personal information on behalf of or about someone else, you should ensure that you have the right to provide us with that information and direct that person to this policy so that they know how we will process their data.

1. Our Contact Details

Please contact BSH if you wish to make a request or if you have a general inquiry.

British Society for Haematology,

100 White Lion Street,

London, N1 9PF

Email [email protected]

Phone: 020 7713 0990

2. What information do we collect about you?

Most of the personal data we process for our ASM is provided directly by you through the use of our services, a form on one of our websites, our conference registration and abstract system, an interaction with our support team, or through direct interaction with our event organisers CPI 

We will collect the minimal data we require to successfully deliver your attendance at our ASM and to improve the service we offer to you as either a delegate, speaker, or exhibitor.

Abstraction submission 

Information collected as part of the abstact submission processing includes

• name
• organisation
• country
• email

This personal data will be collected and stored using EventsAir and shared with conference organisers, reviewers and session chairs for the purpose of conducting the review and compiling the programme. If you do not want your information shared with these stakeholders, you will be excluded from the review and programme due to the GDPR data sharing of information regulations.

Registration portal

Information collected includes *indicates mandatory fields:

• Name and title*
• Organisation*
• Position*
• Contact details, including email*, postal*, and billing address*, phone number
• Dietary requirements
• Special requirements, accessibility needs
• Age group*
• Areas of interest
• Membership number

Data from the event is collected and analysed post-event to review the behaviour of delegates. Data collected includes

• sessions attended
• meetings attended
• time spent in sessions during a virtual meeting.

The purpose of analysing such data is to help plan upcoming BSH meetings. Data is analysed as general data and not as person-specific.

3. Why do we collect this

Data protection law requires that we have one or more of the following lawful bases to process your data. 

• Consent – we will normally ask for your consent to process your personal data. You can withdraw consent at any time. You can register your interest to receive communications from us about the ASM and exhibition. This is optional and based on your consent so you can unsubscribe at any time by contacting [email protected], or you can unsubscribe via a link in emails sent to you.
• Contractual Obligation – where we need to process your personal data either to take steps to enter into a contract with you or to fulfill a contract, we already have with you. We collect information highlighted in the “what information do we collect about you” section to ensure that we are able to fulfill our contractual obligation to you as a conference delegate, abstract submitter, speaker, or exhibitor. Your email and postal address are collected to ensure we can communicate with you when required, and if you make a payment your billing address is collected as part of our financial anti-fraud checks. When you enter into this contract with us there is no option to opt-out of receiving administrative emails as we will need to use email to send you information such as login details, receipts, and CPD certificates.
• Legitimate interest – where personal data is collected and used if it is necessary for the legitimate business interest of the organisation - if its use is fair and balanced and does not unduly impact the rights of the individual concerned. When we use your personal information we always complete a legitimate interest assessment to consider if it is fair and balanced to do so and if it is within your reasonable expectations. Legitimate interest may be used to send you information or updates about our ASM.

4. With whom might we share your information?

We will only use your information for the purposes for which it was obtained. We may sometimes need to share your information with a third-party supplier, data hosting providers, or third parties who help us to deliver our ASM. These organisations will only act under our instruction and are subject to contractual obligations containing strict data protection clauses. We will only share the minimal data required for this purpose, we do not pass on your details to any other third parties unless you have given us consent to do so or we have a legal requirement to do so.

The following are our main third-party data processors who support us to process your booking and to generally administer our ASM, although we may use additional trusted third party suppliers ad hoc where necessary to provide you with a service or product:

CPI acts as our conference organiser, CPI processes on our behalf most of the data required to organise the conference. For information on their practices, read CPI's privacy notice.

Only authorised CPI staff, third-party companies (i.e. service providers) staff or BSH's authorised staff (who have contractually agreed to keep all information secure) have access to your personal data. All CPI staff who have access to your personal data are required to adhere to the staff confidentiality regulations and all third-party employees who have access to your personal data have signed non-disclosure agreements. In addition, data transfer agreements are in place with third-party companies that have access to your personal data to make sure these data remain secure.

CPI works with certain third parties to obtain support services in connection with travel, meetings and events services, and/or other CPI services to BSH, such as emergency online booking services, hotel booking services, ground transportation requirements, or airline ticket issuance, badge providers. CPI may also transfer personal data to third parties at the request of BSH. For example, to sponsors and exhibitors or to other third parties for data consolidation or tracking services to generate statistics. During events or congresses, sponsors or exhibitors may scan participants' or delegates’ badges with the consent of the latter, in this scenario, the collection and use of personal data are governed by each sponsor or exhibitor’s privacy policy. CPI may also transfer your data to a third-party in the event of any reorganisation, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer, or other disposition of all or any portion of CPI business, assets, or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings). Prior to a transfer, third parties (except for travel suppliers and authorised transfers such as within the EU) are required to sign a data transfer agreement with CPI that requires them to follow the applicable data protection laws.

CPI may disclose your data to third parties where such disclosure is permitted and required by law or court order, or where such disclosure is necessary for the protection and defence of its rights.

• Sponsors

We share the data of those who have opted in to share their information with our sponsors and exhibitors. The list of the information we send to our sponsors is a spreadsheet with name, job role, organisation, and email address. For sponsored symposium attendees we will cross-check the data of those attending the symposium against those who have opted in to share their data with sponsors in the registration system.

• John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

If you are named as an author on an abstract, we will share your name and organisation so John Wiley & Sons Inc can publish your abstract in the British Journal of Haematology.

5) How long do we keep hold of your information?

We will only retain your information for as long as you consent or for as long as necessary to fulfil our legal or statutory obligations, our business need, or because it is of historical importance. This means that we may retain some of your personal information for a set period of time after our relationship with you has ended. General and personal data will be kept by CPI only as long as reasonably necessary, taking into consideration its need to answer queries or resolve problems, to provide improved and new services, and to comply with legal requirements under applicable laws or with inquiries from BSH on past events or travel activities. CPI will retain general and personal data for a maximum period of five years if there is no specific legal requirement. Financial data is kept for ten years.

You may cancel/delete your CPI account by sending an email to our Data Protection Officer: [email protected]

6)   Data storage and international transfers of information

We may wish to transfer personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA), for certain purposes related to administering the conference. We may also on rare occasions decide to use the services of a supplier outside the European Economic Area (EEA). This means that your personal information may be transferred, processed, and stored outside the EEA.

Any transfer of your Data outside the European Economic Area shall only take place with appropriate safeguards in place, such as contractual terms in compliance with applicable data protection laws and regulations.

7) Website, technical information, and collection of data through ‘Cookies’

To ensure the safety of your data on CPI’s website and systems, CPI has implemented appropriate technical, contractual, administrative, physical, and organizational measures to protect your personal data from loss, destruction, unauthorized access, accidental or unlawful disclosure, and manipulation. These measures are subject to continuous development in accordance with technological progress and are periodically reviewed to comply with all applicable privacy laws.

CPI may use your data to send you marketing communications as chosen by you in the registration process. CPI may use the data to analyze trends in order to propose other services to BSH, such as new events or other services.

CPI may use your data to send you marketing communications about the ASM that we believe may be of interest to you, CPI uses third-party service providers to present services and offers tailored to the preferences and interests demonstrated by your online activity over time.

CPI, or third parties instructed by CPI, evaluate this data purely for statistical and only in an anonymized form, in order to optimize CPI’s website and increase user-friendliness, efficiency, and safety. CPI may in particular, use technical data to measure the success of CPI marketing campaigns, compile statistics about CPI website usage and response rates, and use aggregated personal data to calculate the percentage of CPI users who have a particular telephone area code.

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information that are downloaded to your device when you visit a webpage. Cookies are widely used in order to make a website work or to work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of a website.

The following cookies are on the BSH conferences website

Strictly Necessary Cookies (always active)

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you that amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in, or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.

Currently, no strictly necessary cookies are active

Performance Cookies (requires consent)

These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources to measure and improve our site's performance. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and, therefore, anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies, we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.

8)  Your Rights

You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below

1. Right of access. You can ask us for a copy of the information that we hold about you.
2. Right of rectification. You are responsible for updating us on any changes to the personal information you have provided. You have the right to request that we correct inaccurate data or complete incomplete data that we hold on you.
3. Right to erasure. In certain circumstances, you may request that we erase your personal data held by us. We may not be able to delete all personal data because we may have a legal obligation or because we are required to retain it for a task in the public interest, but we can delete non-essential data.
4. Right of restriction. You have the right to restrict the way we process your personal data in certain circumstances, for example, where we are relying on legitimate interests to process data
5. Right to objection. You can ask that we stop using unnecessary data to fulfil our legal obligations.

Where you have consented to us using your personal data, you can withdraw consent at any time by contacting us

British Society for Haematology,

100 White Lion Street,

London, N1 9PF

Email [email protected]

Phone: 020 7713 0990

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

MCI Group acted as our conference organiser for ASM's from 2017 to 2022. MCI processed on our behalf most of the data required to organise the conferences during this time. For information on their practices, read MCI's privacy notice. 

MCI will only retain your information for as long as you consent or for as long as necessary to fulfill our legal or statutory obligations, our business need, or because it is of historical importance. This means that they may retain some of your personal information for a set period of time after our relationship with you has ended. General and personal data will be kept by MCI only as long as reasonably necessary taking into consideration its need to answer queries or resolve problems, to provide improved and new services, and to comply with legal requirements under applicable laws or with inquiries from BSH on past events or travel activities. MCI will retain general and personal data for a maximum period of five years if there is no specific legal requirement. Financial data is kept for seven years.

During this time MCI collected data to successfully deliver your attendance at our ASM and to improve the service we offered to you as either a delegate, speaker, or exhibitor.

Information collected included *indicates mandatory fields:

Name and title*

Organisation*

Profession*

Contact details, including email*, postal*, and billing address, phone number

Age group*

Areas of interest

Membership number

If you have any queries around data collected and stored by MCI on our behalf please contact James Hampton, who is MCI's Data Officer. His email address is [email protected]

Your data and how we use it

Like most websites today, our web servers keep log files that record data each time a device accesses those servers. The log files can contain data about the nature of each access, including originating IP addresses, internet service providers, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system versions, device type and timestamps.

To allow us to review our services and locate areas for improvement, we use Google Analytics to track your usage information when you interact with our websites and services. This includes which webpages you visit, what you click on, what device or browser you are using, IP address, and so on.  Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit our site, rather than your name or other identifying information.We do not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with personally identifiable information.

As part of our commitment to your data privacy, we actively anonymise your IP location before any information is sent to Google. Although Google Analytics plants a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit our site, the cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. For more information on Google Analytics' use of data and cookies, please see Google's "Safeguarding your data".

Emails sent by us through MailChimp include page tags that allow us to collect information about who opened those emails and clicked on links in them. This information is stored on MailChimp, and is used for the express purpose of ensuring that your information is up-to-date and determine what is of interest to our customers. For more information, see MailChimp's Privacy Policy.

How long we keep your information

Any personal information collected through Google Analytics is erased automatically after 26 months.

Cookies provide information about your use of the website, providing statistical data that does not identify any personal details whatsoever. Where used, these cookies are downloaded to your computer and stored on the computer's hard drive.

You can adjust the settings on your computer to decline any cookies if you wish. This can be done within the ‘settings’ section of your computer. For more information please read the advice at AboutCookies.org.

For more detailed information on the cookies, please see below:

• ASP.NET_SessionId - this cookie allows us to track your current session, is part of the internal processing of our website, and does not track any of your user data.  
• BSHAuth - this cookie is generated when you log into the site. It remembers your session and authentication, and stops you from having to log in on every page.
• _RequestVerificationToken - this cookie is designed to verify that you are a genuine user when you log into the website, and prevent fraudulent access to the website and your account.
• _ga, IDE, _gat, _gid - these cookies are all part of the Google Analytics service. They allow us to build statistical information on the users of our website without identifying any personal information. For more information, please see Google's information on Google Analytics cookies.

Website account holders

We collect the following information, either from you directly through use of our services, a form on our website or an interaction with our support team:

• Name
• Email address
• Current position
• Communications preferences

This information is collected to allow you to log in to the authenticated section of the website, to de-duplicate our data, to ensure users only hold a single website account, and to allow you to sign up to receive relevant communications. This information is not shared with any external party, and for non-Members of the Society we delete this information 36 months after you last accessed your account. 

All elective communication is sent by email; you can update your desired email address on your MyBSH page, or in the Contact Us section.

You can modify your communication preferences at any point by logging in to your MyBSH and specifying exactly what communication you wish to receive. If you experience any difficulties accessing your MyBSH page, you can also contact us at [email protected].

You can opt-out of this non-administrative communication by unsubscribing at the bottom of our email, or by contacting us at [email protected]

If you are a Member of the Society, your website account will be kept active for the entire duration of your Membership, to ensure that you are able to access your membership benefits.

Travel, Meeting and Medical Student Scholarships

Any relevant information supplied by you in your application will be encrypted and sent to the members of the relevant panel, whether that be the Research and Grants Committee or the Global Haematology SIG Officers. After the reviewing period is complete, all external copies of your application will be erased.  Your application will then be kept internally for seven years, whereupon it will be deleted.

We will also retain basic information including your name, contact details, the name of the grant received and the amount disbursed for up to seven years for tax purposes. 

Your financial information (required to disburse the grant funding) will be erased from our systems as soon as the transfer process is complete.

In some instances, we may share your name with other funding bodies to ensure that funding is not duplicated.

Your consent to our processing the data you supply to us is required for the submission of any application. You can at any point withdraw your consent to processing, though please note that this will automatically result in the withdrawing of your grant application.

Research Scholarships

Any relevant information supplied by you in your application will be encrypted and sent to the members of the relevant panel, whether that be the Research and Grants Committee or the Global Haematology SIG Officers.

Research Scholarships may require review by an expert in the field, and potential reviewers will be sent your name, your institution and the brief description of your application. Once they have confirmed no conflict of interest, a reviewer will receive your full application, excluding your personal and contact details wherever possible. The Research and Grants Committee or Global Haematology SIG Officers will also have access to your application, as they will make the final decision based on the feedback from the expert reviewer.

Our reviewers comply to confidentiality and data protection policies, and external copies of your application will be erased. Your application will then be kept internally for seven years, whereupon it will be deleted.

We will also retain basic information including your name, contact details, the title of your project, the name of the grant received and the amount disbursed for up to seven years for tax purposes. 

Grant reports

If your grant report is selected to be showcased in our communications, it may appear on our website or in our promotional material.

If you wish for any information to remain confidential, please inform our communications team when supplying your grant report.

Your report may remain on our website for up to seven years. For the purposes of impact reporting, we will retain our report for up to seven years. 

You can at any point withdraw your consent for our use of your image or personal data in promotional material. If you withdraw consent and your image, name or words have been included in printed promotional material, we will remove your image from any future print runs but continue to distribute any already-printed material. You can expect this process to take 12 months at most.

Some of our grant applications require review by an expert in the appropriate research specialism. To fulfill our role as a not-for-profit organisation and advance the practice and study of haematology, it is necessary for us to seek experts to assist us in the review of research grant funding. For this reason, we may contact you to ask if you are willing to volunteer as an expert grant application reviewer.

We justify this contact on the basis of legitimate interest, as otherwise we could not ensure that the research funding is provided to the candidate best placed to advance the science of haematology.

What we collect

• Title
• Name
• Contact email
• Institution
• Area of Specialty
• BSH grant reviewing history

This information is processed purely for the purpose of allocating grant applications to appropriate expert reviewers. The information is collected either from members of the Research and Grants Committee, who recommend expert reviewers, or from the public domain.

Your information will be retained for two years after your most recent contact. 

Opting out 

If you wish to opt-out of grant application reviewing, you can contact us directly at [email protected].

To ensure that we do not re-contact those who have opted-out, we retain a list of names not to be contacted. This list will be retained for five years to ensure that we do not contact you again within this period.

Your name, organisational details and email address will be kept on record for the period that you are a member of the committee or taskforce, and will be shared with other members of your committee or taskforce as part of general proceedings.

This information is processed on the basis of your consent as a member of the committee or taskforce. You can withdraw your consent for us to share information with the group at any point by resigning your position on the group. 

Taskforce and Writing Group - Declaration of Interest forms

All members of the BSH Guidelines Taskforces and Writing Groups are required to complete a Declaration of Interest (DoI) form, which can be found on the Proposing a new BSH Guideline page. If you declare a conflict of interest, it may be published on the guideline itself (hosted and printed by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., see their privacy policy for more information) and on the relevant section of the BSH website. These DoIs help us ensure that the BSH Guidelines are fair and unbiased, thus your information is processed in the legitimate interest of BSH, any individual who reads the Guidelines or is cared for by a reader of the Guidelines.

The DoI forms include your personal and contact details, as well as any details that you supply to us about potential conflicts of interest. These forms are reviewed by the Chair of the Guidelines Executive Committee and the Chair of the relevant Taskforce, and then retained by BSH for the duration of the guideline's active use.  This information may be disclosed to third parties in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

In order to process your expense claim, we ask you to provide financial and personal information (name and postal address), as well as receipts showing proof of payment.

The financial information (sort code and account number) are retained long enough for us to ensure that your transfer has been successful. After that point we redact your information from any physical documentation. We will retain this and your personal information for up to seven years in Sage (our online payment facility) as part of our legal obligations to the HMRC. 

When you apply for a committee, writing group, working group or taskforce position, we ask that you supply information relevant to your application. By applying for a vacancy, you consent to the processing of your personal data as relevant to the application, which may include:

• Name and title
• Qualifications
• Professional or academic history
• Contact details
• References
• CV and information contained within

This information will be shared with the members of the reviewing panel, which is usually comprised of current committee members. These members are BSH volunteers who abide by BSH's confidentiality and data protection policies.

Your details may be retained for up to 24 months after your application, and you may withdraw your consent for us to hold your information at any point.

Board of Trustees Nominations and Elections

All candidates for the Board of Trustees (including Officers such as the President, Treasurer and Secretary) are required to provide a candidate statement that will be disseminated to the BSH electorate. These statements may be shared with any relevant election coordinators (see "Who we share your data with"), and may be made available in the public domain. Candidate statements will be retained for up to seven years after the election, and may be archived for historical purposes.

Should you comment on a guideline on a Sounding Board, your contact details will be passed on to the Writing Group responsible for that guideline. This enables the Writing Group to contact you should they have any queries about your responses.   This step is an integral component of the guideline consultation process, and your information is consequently processed on the basis of legitimate interest.

The taskforces and writing groups are comprised of expert volunteers who abide by BSH's confidentiality and data protection policies.

No further information will be passed to the Writing Group, and they will not use your contact details for any purpose beyond contacting you about your comment.

We may also compile anonymised position and organisation data of our Sounding Boards for census purposes, to ensure that we are obtaining a geographically and professionally diverse range of responses to the guidelines under consultation.

Members of a Special Interest Group will be asked to supply the following on sign-up:

• Title*
• Name*
• Contact email*
• Organisation
• Position
• Area of Specialty
• What motivated you to join the SIG?
• Membership type (if BSH member)

Only information with the asterix (*) is mandatory.

By joining the Special Interest Group via the sign-up form, you consent to be notified about developments or meetings relating to the SIG. As long as this consent is valid, you will be considered a member of the SIG. You can withdraw this consent at any point by clicking the 'unsubscribe' button at the bottom of any SIG notification, or by emailing [email protected]

The information you provide will be used by BSH and the SIG officers purely for the purposes of advancing the area promoted by the SIG. This may include contacting you for advice in your area of specialty, or to encourage cooperation amongst members to further the SIG's area of interest.

Your information will not be shared with anyone outside the SIG officers. 

Your information will be erased from our MailChimp database within two years' of your leaving the SIG by withdrawing your consent.

Information from page tags.
We use third party tracking services that employ cookies and page tags (also known as web beacons) to collect data about visitors to our websites. This data includes usage and user statistics. Emails sent by us through MailChimp include page tags that allow the sender to collect information about who opened those emails and clicked on links in them. This helps us ensure that our contact information is up-to-date, and helps us understand what is and is not of interest to SIG members.

The Global Haematology Special Interest Group provides financial support to plenary speakers attending international conferences, with the aim of building international partnerships between the BSH and haematology societies in low and middle incoming countries.

What information is collected, and why

As an applicant for the Plenary Speaker programme, we ask that you provide information about yourself and why you or your Society would be suitable for support by the Global Haematology SIG. This information can include information about your professional history, your personal contact details and any other supporting information that you supply to us.

We collect this information to facilitate the review process, to contact you with the result of your application, and to promote the programme.

As the information is necessary to fulfil the programme's basic functions, we ask applicants to consent to BSH's processing of their data at the point of application. This consent can be withdrawn at any point, however, this will necessitate withdrawal of your Plenary Speaker application.

This information is collected from you through your application form, or by interactions that you have with our staff (including email and phone conversations).

Who we share the information with

Your application will be shared with the reviewing panel, comprised of officers of the Global Haematology Special Interest Group. These officers are BSH volunteers who abide by BSH's confidentiality and data protection policies. 

Should your application be successful, we will also share your contact details and CV with the relevant conference organisers, to ensure that they are able to organise and promote your attendance at the conference.

To help promote the programme and build international haematology communities, we may also promote the event and your attendance, including through social media and electronic communication.

How long we retain your information

Your application will be retained until the completion of the Plenary Speaker programme. Your application will be erased within 12 months of the end of the programme.

As part of our governance process and HMRC requirements, we retain a list of successful applicants. To ensure transparency in our charitable actions, this list may be kept in the public domain.

Essay Prizes

When you submit an essay to our competition, we ask for the following information:

• Name
• Contact email 
• Medical school

If you are selected as a either the winner or runner-up, we will also ask for your postal address (to send you a certificate) and your financial details (to transfer your prize money).

By providing this information, you consent to our processing and holding the information to ensure we can communicate with you in the event of your being selected as a winner. 

As part of our commitment to transparency, we publicise the prize winners' names, medical school and full essay text on our website. The greater scrutiny that this provides ensures that our reviewing process is robust and diverse, as well as providing educational benefit to other students.

Financial and postal information are erased immediately after we have confirmed that the funding is disbursed and the certificate received.

We retain the name and contact details of essay candidates for up to 36 months. We do this to ensure that, if there are any irregularities regarding a particular winner, we can then award the prize to the next best candidate. For historical purposes, we retain the name and essay

To avoid any potential for bias or conflict of interest, only the full essay text is provided to the reviewing panel. The reviewing panel does not receive any of the above personal information.

All essays are processed through a plagiarism programme. All personal data is removed prior to this processing.

National Clinical Impact Awards

To enable our panel to review applications for the National Clinical Impact Awards, you are requested to supply personal data including:

• Title and name
• Date of Birth
• Contact details, including correspondence address
• Ethnicity
• Speciality
• Work history
• Current employer
• Qualification history
• GMC number

This information is processed and held on the basis of your consent; without this information our panel would be unable to review your application and provide BSH's support, and as such it is an integral component of your request for Advisory Committee on Clinical Impact Awards support.

All of the information in your application is shared securely with the members of the review panel, BSH volunteers who abide by BSH's confidentiality and data protection policies.

We treat these applications with special consideration given the sensitive nature of the information contained therein. As soon as the panel has passed their judgement on to the Advisory Committee on Clinical Impact Awards, we erase all information included in your application.

Crucible and Abstracts 

Our Events Coordinator, MCI UK, organises our annual conference, including the abstract and crucible programmes. For further information, see MCI's privacy notice.

We strive to obtain your informed consent before publishing any image or video that contains identifiable images of you. We aim to never publish any material in which you are the sole, central focus without receiving your prior permission. 

This consent may be obtained from you by:

• Your supplying of the image or video to us for publication;
• Your signing of a consent form provided to you;
• Your written confirmation by email or letter that we may use your image.

We ask delegates at our conferences or events to inform us if they do not wish to be filmed, and where we do not have a record of express consent we do our utmost to avoid the inclusion of identifiable faces or forms. If you believe that your image has been used and wish for it to be withdrawn, please contact us at [email protected] and we will respond within three working days.

If you provide consent, you may at any point withdraw your consent by contacting us at [email protected], and we will then endeavour to remove the specified image or video wherever it is located.

If your image is used in printed material, we will remove the image from the next round of publishing, though for financial constraints we may continue to use the document temporarily. Our promotional material usually has a shelf life of less than a year, so you can expect that your image will no longer be being used within one year.

We work with industry partners to inform stakeholders of our charitable work and promote the study and practice of haematology. This data processing is done on the basis of legitimate interest; and prior to each project we conduct a legitimate interest assessment, the details of which can be requested from [email protected].

We conduct due diligence checks on partners from whom we purchase data to ensure that they are compliant with data protection and privacy laws, and only process data when we are satisfied that the data were collected in a compliant manner and that the processing is within the expectations of data subjects.

You can at any point contact us to opt out of this promotional communication - to do so, email [email protected] and include the details of the communication that you no longer wish to receive.

Our industry partners include:

• Wilmington Healthcare - you can find more information on Wilmington Healthcare's health and social care database on their privacy notice.

Haematology images and case reports

If you wish to submit a haematology image or case report to our education section, we ask that you supply your full name and email address.

These and any other personal data that you provide through the form will be shared with the editorial team, who may contact you if they have any queries about your content. 
Your details will be kept on record as long as your content remains live, to ensure that your work is acknowledged and any future queries can be resolved.

If your content is approved by the editorial team, your name and content and other details that you provide will be published on our website and may be promoted through our communications.

If you supply an image with an identifiable individual, you confirm that you have acquired the consent of the individual in question.

60 at 60 Exhibition

If you wish to submit material for the 60 at 60 exhibition, we ask that you supply your full name and email address. 

These and any other personal data that you provide, whether through the form or by other means, will be shared with the communications team, who may contact you if they have any queries about your content. 
You consent to your details being kept on record for as long as your content remains live, to ensure that your story is correctly attributed and any future queries can be resolved.

If your content is approved by the communications team, your name and content and other details that you provide:

• will be published on our website
• may be reproduced in hard-copy and/or digital format for display at our events
• may be promoted through our communications.

If you supply an image with an identifiable individual, you confirm that you have acquired the consent of the individual in question.

If you wish to lend an item for the 60 at 60 exhibition, we ask that you supply your full name, contact telephone number and email address. 

These and any other personal data that you provide, whether through the form or by other means, will be shared with the communications team, who will contact you for more information and to discuss the suitability of your item.

You consent to your details being kept on record for as long as your content remains live to ensure that your item is correctly attributed and any future queries can be resolved.