Privacy Policy.

Overview

This privacy notice explains what information we collect about you, how we use it and how we protect it. It also gives you information about your rights.

We are committed to protecting and using your personal information responsibly.

If you have any questions about our privacy notice, please email info@whitesmileclinic.ie

Who this Privacy Policy is for

This privacy policy is for:

Who we are

We’re a dental healthcare organisation that offers a wide range of services to support our customers dental health. When we say White Smile Clinic in this Privacy Policy, we mean all our clinics in the Republic of Ireland, locations can be seen on our website.

  • In the Republic of Ireland we operate our White Smile Clinic and White Smile Dental dental practices

Who processes your personal information?

Which business looks after and uses your information as a data controller depends on which services you’re using or interacting with. A data controller is the business that looks after your data and decides how it is used.

The information we process, and the reasons why, may vary across our products and services. We explain any differences in this privacy notice.

How we collect your personal information
From you

We collect your personal information from you when you get in touch with us:

  • by phone, where we may record or monitor phone calls for quality assurance and to make sure we’re keeping to legal rules, codes of practice and internal policies
  • by email
  • through our websites, including webchats and virtual assistants or online booking forms
  • by using our products and services
  • by post
  • by completing an application or other form(s)
  • by entering competitions
  • through social media
  • face to face, for example during treatment

Third Parties

We also collect information about you from third parties

Sometimes we need to collect your information from, or share it with other people or organisations. When we share your information, we only share the information needed, and as little of it as possible, for a specific purpose. For example, if you need treatment, we’ll share relevant medical details with your treatment provider.

We have processes in place to make sure that your information is protected when we share it with third parties. If you’re sharing someone else’s personal information with us, please make sure they’ve seen this privacy notice and are comfortable with you giving us their information.

We’ve set out the types of third parties we collect and share information with – Parents if required in relation to your treatment, healthcare providers if you need a referral to a consultant or other medical professional to continue an appropriate treatment.

What personal information we collect

Basic personal data

Name, age and date of birth, email, phone, address.

Residency

The country you live in and national identifiers such as PPS for claiming back on income tax returns with a MED 2 form.

Communications

Details of any contact we’ve had with you, including phone calls and emails.

Technical information

The devices and technology you use and website browser settings.

Special category information

Information about your medical history, physical or mental health, including genetic or biometric information. We may get this information from:

  • application forms
  • notes and reports about your health and any treatment and care you’ve received or need
  • notes from calls and other communications you’ve had with us
  • referrals from your existing medical providers
  • quotes
  • records of medical services and treatment you’ve received

How we use the personal information we collect

Under data protection laws, we can only process your information if we have a legal reason (known as a ‘lawful ground’) for doing so.

You can find out how we use your personal information, including the lawful grounds, under data protection laws that we rely on to process your information. Our reason for processing your information

  • It’s necessary to provide the services set out in a contract
  • It’s required or allowed by law
  • We have a legitimate interest to:
    • deliver our products and services
    • tailor the delivery of our products and services to your specific needs and interests

For special category information

  • It’s necessary for health or social care purposes such as:
    • preventive or occupational medicine
    • assessing your working capacity as an employee
    • medical diagnosis
    • providing healthcare or treatment
    • providing social care
    • managing healthcare or social care systems or services
  • With your consent (if required)
  • When it’s in your vital interests

When we need your consent to process your personal information

We’ll only ask you for consent to process your personal information if there’s no other legal reason to process it, or we think it’s appropriate to do so.

We always tell you when we need it

We’ll tell you when we need your consent and ask you for it. If we can’t provide a product or service without your consent, we’ll make this clear when we ask for it. For example, we can’t process dental treatment plans without previous medical information.

You can always change your mind

If you later withdraw your consent, we’ll be unable to provide you with any product or service that relies on us having your consent to process your personal information.

When we use your information, it is only for the provision of our services and products:

  • only share it with legitimate third parties
  • always limit the ways and reasons it is processed
  • never sell it

How long we keep your information for

For Dental services, we have a clinical duty to keep dental records for 11 years from the date of your last appointment or until your 26th birthday, whichever is later.

Cookies and other similar technologies

What are these technologies?

When you use our websites and apps, we and third-party companies use cookies and similar technologies such as pixel tags to collect information.

cookie is a text file containing small amounts of information which a server may download to your computer, mobile or tablet when you visit a website or use an app.

pixel tag (sometimes called a web beacon) is an invisible image with a line of code placed in an email or on a web page.

For simplicity, we refer to all such technologies as ‘cookies’.

 

How do we use them?

There are different types of cookies to do different things, for example:

  • letting you navigate between different pages on a website efficiently
  • remembering preferences you’ve given
  • helping us identify ways to improve your overall experience of using our websites and apps

Some cookies are used to show you advertising tailored to your interests, or to count the number of site visits and find out which are the most popular pages.

Managing cookies and tracking technologies

You can use our cookies management tool to see and control what cookies we use, how they are categorised and how long they last.

You can also control, block, or delete cookies through your web browser settings, usually found under ‘settings’ on your chosen browser.

Analytics

Analytics is a process to analyse data, statistics and other information, either automatically by a computer or manually by a person.

Anonymous analytics

As part of our day-to-day business, we produce management information reports. These are typically aggregated which means the information is grouped together and not looked at on an individual basis, and often they do not contain personal information. For example, we produce reports showing business performance split by day, business area or customer type.

Marketing

Conducting and improving our marketing activities

We use profiling for marketing purposes. This helps us understand what offers, incentives and information may interest you and other people. We take the following steps:

1 ‐ We collect your information

We collect information directly from you and through automated means both as part of your onboarding as a customer or business partner and during our relationship with you. We also collect information about you from third parties, such as your employer or insurance brokers.

2 ‐ We make predictions and gather insights about you and others

Profiling helps us evaluate information about you and others to improve our marketing activities. We undertake manual profiling, meaning our team will manually review a set of data and filter it by different categories. For example, we may predict that our female customers in a given age range will be interested in a female health initiative, or that if you’re already engaging with some of our digital products you may be interested in other useful digital features to improve your experience.

3 ‐ We create data sets

We combine your information with other people’s information. This helps us understand our customers and business partners on a less individual level. We also segment the information into different categories, for example by type of customer. This gives us a more accurate picture of the marketing that might interest you and others.

4 ‐ We market our products and services to you and others

We share personalised marketing communications by email and phone and within our apps and other digital services, displaying content that we think will be relevant to you. We also use the results of this to find other people with similar traits who might be interested in our products and services.

Your rights about profiling and automated decision making

Right to object to profiling related marketing
If you object, we’ll stop these activities.

Right to object to a purely automated decision about you
If you object, a member of our team will manually review the decision that was made about you.

Opting-out from marketing

Need help?

Contact us at info@whitesmileclinic.ie for questions related to our Privacy Policy.