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Effective Date: November 1st, 2008 At the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation (the “Foundation”), we understand that your information is a very personal matter, and we appreciate the trust you place in us to treat your information carefully and sensibly. As part of our commitment to honoring your privacy, we provide this policy (“Privacy policy”) to make you aware of the choices you have about the way your information is used and to explain how we guard your information. We hope this policy will help you make informed decisions about sharing information with us. This policy answers the following questions: What information do we collect about you and how do we use it?
Will we share your personal information with third parties?
What choices do you have about the collection and use of your personal information?
What security measures do we take to safeguard your personal information? If you have any questions or concerns about our policy or its implementation, you may contact us at this email address:
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Information collection and use We collect personal and non-personal information to grant you access to, and improve, our services, and contact you. Most of our site can be enjoyed as a visitor, but you need to register in order to take advantage of certain free services on the site, like our community forum. Information you provide We collect personal information when you voluntarily provide it to us. Registration: When you register for the site, we collect personal information from you such as your email address, password, and optionally, location and occupation. Registering allows you to post content in our forums and participate in online discussions. We do not ask for additional information, including other personal or contact information, demographics, health interests, goals, medical history, and/or vital statistics. We won’t email you or send you requests for such information. Opinions and polls: We reserve the right to ask you to give your opinion when you visit our site. We use information from opinion polls to better understand the needs of our users and to gather information about health care trends and issues. Questions and answers are stored, but they are not linked to identifying information about you and will not be shared with third parties. Fellowship Award and Research Award Programs: We may ask you to provide additional information or answer certain questions in order to participate in fellowship award programs, research award programs or papers sponsored by the Foundation and/or one of our partners. We may contact you in connection with a particular fellowship or research award in order to update you regarding your status, administer the program, and for other related messages. Special note for parents: This site is a general audience site and not designed or intended to attract children younger than 13. We do not collect personal information from any person we actually know is younger than 13. Log information: When you visit our site, our servers will automatically collect log information. This information may include your Web page request, Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request, and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser. We collect log information so that we can properly administer our system and gather aggregate information about how our site is being used, including the pages visitors are viewing. DoubleClick, our Web advertising partner, may use your IP address to determine your approximate geographic location in order to provide you with location-relevant advertising. Cookies: We collect anonymous information about your use of our site through cookies. The cookie does not tell us who you are. Only you can tell us that. The information collected by cookies [helps us generate customized content, and also] allows us to statistically monitor how many people are using our site and for what purpose. [For polls, we may use cookies to help ensure that an individual can’t vote more than once on a particular question or issue.] We do not store any identifying information in any cookies on your computer. Your browser software can be set to reject all cookies or to accept cookies only from our site. Most browsers offer instructions on how to reset the browser to reject cookies in the “Help” section of the toolbar. If you reject our cookies, you may not be able to log in or use certain functions and conveniences of our site. Web beacons: We also use Web beacons, sometimes called single-pixel GIFs, that momentarily direct your browser to a server other than the Foundation in a way that may not be apparent to you. Web beacons are used to count users who visited specific pages and determine which emails were opened and/or acted upon when we send HTML-formatted email messages. We do not link any identifying information to Web beacons.
Information disclosure to third parties We know how important it is to keep the information you’ve entrusted to us confidential. We will not rent, sell or share personal information about you with third parties. In case the need arises, we will ask for your permission before we disclose your personal information. Disclosure for legal reasons: We may release personal information to third parties: (1) to comply with valid legal requirements such as a law, regulation, search warrant, subpoena or court order; or (2) in special cases, such as a physical threat to you or others, a threat to homeland security, a threat to our system or network, or cases in which we believe it is reasonably necessary to investigate or prevent harm, fraud, abuse, or illegal conduct. In the event that we are legally compelled to disclose your personal information to a third party, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you unless doing so would violate the law or court order. Agents and contractors: Contractors sometimes have access to your personal information in the course of assisting in operating our business and providing products or services to you. These contractors include vendors and suppliers that provide us with technology, services, and/or content for the operation and maintenance of our site. Contractors have an obligation under their contracts with us to keep your information confidential and to comply with our privacy and security policies. Aggregated, non-personal information: We may share aggregated information about you with third parties. This is information that is combined with the non-personal information of other users and does not allow you to be identified or contacted. Depending on the circumstances, we may or may not charge third parties for this aggregated information. We also may not limit the third parties’ use of the aggregated information. Research and Fellowship Award Programs: The information contained in research and fellowship award applications is considered confidential and, except as specifically set forth below, will not be shared with third parties other than members of our Research and Fellowship Advisory Committees or used for purposes other than administering the award programs. In the event the Foundation grants a research or fellowship award, the Foundation may freely publish the following information contained in the research or fellowship award application: the name, title and institutional affiliation of the of the award recipient; the title of the research project; the research proposal abstract; the name of the fellowship recipient’s mentor and training site; and the fellowship recipient’s educational/training background and stated goals for the fellowship period. The Foundation may also publish the amount of the award and the award start and end dates. Progress reports submitted to the Foundation by research and fellowship award recipients are considered public information and may be published on our website or in any other reports or publications issued by the Foundation. If data other than that which is contained in progress reports will be disclosed or shared, we will include a notice at the time of data collection. Handling of Confidential Information
The Foundation works in continuous collaboration with a variety of organizations, some with competing or proprietary interests, to achieve our mission to accelerate the adoption of MRI-guided focused ultrasound surgery. Transparency and openness are fundamental to achieving this mission, and are essential to rapid progress and collaboration. - In general, information regarding the Foundation’s activities is public. Accordingly, the Foundation is not interested in obtaining confidential or proprietary information from or about any stakeholders.
- Notwithstanding the above, we respect the need for confidentiality and do not wish to compromise the confidentiality of sensitive information that may be shared with us either intentionally or inadvertently. We will therefore use reasonable efforts not to disclose, except to the extent required by law, any confidential information we receive that is clearly marked as confidential at the time of disclosure or is identified in writing as confidential within ten days after disclosure if disclosed orally or in other intangible form.
Changes in our corporate structure: If the structure of the Foundation changes due to a merge or is otherwise transferred to another entity, the personal information you have provided at this site may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will take steps to ensure that, without your consent, any personal information that is transferred will not be used or shared in a manner inconsistent with the Privacy Policy under which it was collected. Choice and control over your personal information Whenever reasonably possible, we offer you choices when we ask for personal information and we tell you why we collect different types of information. You may always decline to provide personal information to us and/or refuse cookies in your browser, although some features or services may not function properly as a result. To make it easy for you to make the choices that are right for you, we provide the following controls: Registration: You can change or update your account information, including your password, username, location, occupation, communications and privacy preferences at any time. We do not ask for your name, address, age and/or any other identifiable information from you. You can unregister at any time. We will send you a confirmation email. Once you unregister, you will not be able to sign into the site to post or access any information you may have saved or created on the site. Communications Email communications: Email communication that you send to us via the email links on our site will only be viewed by Foundation employees. If you provide personal health information in your email, it will be used only for the purposes of answering your email. From time to time, we may send you service-related emails, such as a welcome email when you register with our site. Newsletters: At various places on the site, you will be given the option to receive recurring informational newsletters. You can unsubscribe from newsletters by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of any newsletter. Efforts we take to safeguard your personal information We are committed to protecting the security of your information through procedures and technology designed for this purpose by taking these steps: We limit access to your personal information to employees having a reasonable need to access this information to provide products and services to you. Employees who misuse information are subject to disciplinary action, including termination. Changes to this Policy: We may update this Policy. We will notify you about material changes in the way we treat personal information by sending a notice to the email address specified in your account. We may also make nonmaterial changes to our Policy that generally will not affect our use of your personal information. If you don’t agree with the new policy, you always have the option of closing your account. Please see instructions for closing your account above. Our current policy, identified by its effective date, will be posted on the Site, and you should check it frequently.
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