Data Protection & Cookie Notice

MedTech Europe’s Data Protection Notice

This Data Protection Notice applies to MedTech Europe members, stakeholders, and any other visitor of the MedTech Europe website (https://www.medtecheurope.org/). It also provides more general information on how MedTech Europe processes personal data and why, as we are responsible when processing your personal data.

In the context of our activities, we may collect your personal data. To learn more about what we work on, please review our “About us“ section.

  • If you are a member of MedTech Europe, and you have registered with us, please review the members’ Data Protection Notice, which provides additional information and is available on SharePoint (the Members’ Area).  
  • If you are participating in one of our conferences (e.g. The MedTech Forum) and you want to learn more about the data processing activities in the context of that conference, please review the relevant conference website.

 

Personal data we collect

MedTech Europe collects personal data from you, primarily because you provided it to us directly, offline (e.g., at meetings, conferences and events) or online, through our website(s) (the “Sites”).

As such, we may collect and process the following personal data about you in accordance with this Notice:

  • personal data that you provide to us via the Sites, including but not limited to first and last name, professional address, phone number, profession/title, email address and IP address;
  • personal data that non-members provide to us in relation to their attendance at and/or participation in one of our events, forums or conferences; and
  • personal data that employee/representatives of consortia or other partnerships provide to us.

If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.

We also collect personal data from other sources, including information from publicly available sources, such as public databases, websites, and information from third parties (including our members). The personal data collected include your name, contact details, job title and employer. If we do so, we will provide you with appropriate notice, in compliance with European Data Protection legislation. You always have the right to object to the processing of your personal data where that processing is carried out for our legitimate interest or for direct marketing (see below for more information on your rights).

 

Use of your personal data

We use personal data held about you, where in our legitimate interests, or based on another legal basis (e.g. consent, legal obligation, etc.) for the following purposes:

  • to support your interaction with us, including to ensure that the content of the Sites are presented in the most effective manner for you and your computer or electronic device;
  • to provide you with information you may have requested from us (e.g., through Sites);
  • to notify you about changes to the Sites and to ensure the ongoing accuracy and relevance of such data;
  • for general internal research purposes, including to identify and analyze the regularity of the use of the Sites and the nature of the Sites’ users;
  • to develop products and services for your use;
  • in connection with sponsorship agreements entered into with non-members;
  • in connection with our ongoing projects including but not limited to the Value Based Procurement Community of Practice;
  • for inclusion in proposal submissions to the European Commission where seeking public funding (e.g. Horizon Europe);
  • for purposes of compliance related conference vetting; and
  • for mapping of external stakeholders to be able to engage with them on relevant medtech topics, project or event.

 

Sharing your personal data

We share or disclose your personal data with our affiliates, agents and contractors (including to parties located outside the European Economic Area – “EEA”) for the purposes stated above. We may in exceptional cases also share your personal data with our members (e.g., the mapping of external stakeholders).

a) Hosting & Processing: The Sites are hosted by third-party service providers who help us provide our services. Additionally, other service providers are used for the provision of services to us (e.g., to assist in the organising of an event, to sign you up for the newsletter, etc.) and the distribution of MedTech Europe or related material. Therefore, your personal data may be processed by a third-party service provider.

b) Legal Requirements: Similarly, we may share your personal data as required or permitted by law, or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is legally required or otherwise necessary to protect our rights and property, or the rights, property or safety of others, including to advisers, law enforcement agencies, and judicial and regulatory authorities.

c) International Data Transfers: In exceptional cases, we may transfer your personal data outside the EEA . Where we transfer personal data to a country outside of the EEA which does not provide a similar or adequate level of protection to that provided by countries in the EEA, we will enter into a Model Contract with the recipient and we will make sure appropriate safeguards are in place.

 

How long we keep personal data

We will store the personal data on our databases and retain it as long as we have a legal basis to do so. When we have no ongoing legitimate business need or contractual obligation to process your personal data anymore, we will either delete or anonymize it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal data has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal data and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible. If you are a member and you have a members’ account, please review the Members’ Data Protection Notice for more detailed information.

 

Your rights

Under European data protection law, you have rights including:

  • Your right of access: you have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
  • Your right to rectification: you have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
  • Your right to erasure: you have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Your right to restriction of processing: you have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Your right to object to processing: you have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances (including direct marketing).
  • Your right to data portability – You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

Exercising these rights are free of charge. If you make a request, we will respond within the month (for our contact details, see below), except where

requests are manifestly unfounded or excessive, for example, because of their repetitive character, we may either (i) charge a reasonable fee taking into account the administrative costs of providing the information or communication or taking the action requested or (ii) refuse to act on the request.

If you believe that your complaint has not been adequately addressed, you can also lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Authority in your country.

 

Newsletters and promotional communications

We may contact you periodically by e-mail to provide information regarding events, medtech news, products, services and content that may be of interest to you, unless you advise us that you do not wish to receive newsletters or promotional communications from us. If applicable law requires that we receive your consent before we send you certain types of newsletter communications, we will only send you those types of communications after receiving your consent. If you wish to stop receiving newsletter communications from us, you can contact us (see below) or use the unsubscribe link included in the newsletters and promotional communications.

 

MedTech Europe’s Cookie Notice 

The MedTech Europe website uses different types of cookies. For those cookies that are not strictly necessary, we will ask you to consent to them when you visit the website. You may also click on “I refuse” and decide not to accept them. To make full use of the website, we however recommend to accept them. 

What are cookies and why do we use them? 

Cookies are small text files that are placed on the computer or electronic device of a website user to provide the website operator with information about use of our site. They are used to enable websites to function or to provide information to the owners of a website.

Different types of cookies can be used by a website at the same time for different purposes. In broad terms, MedTech Europe uses cookies for the following purposes:

  • Analytical purposes:   Analytical cookies allow us to recognise, measure and track users of our website in anonymous form. The information collected includes the number of visitors to our site, where visitors have come to our website from and the pages that they have visited. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by determining whether website visitors can find information easily, or by identifying the aspects of websites that are of the most interest to them.
  • Usage preferences:  Some of the cookies on our website are activated when visitors to our sites make a choice about their usage of our site.  The website then ‘remembers’ the settings preferences of the user concerned.  This allows us to tailor aspects of our website to the individual user.
  • Disclaimer:  We use cookies on our website to record when a website visitor has seen a notice, such as this one, or provided consent, such as consent to our Disclaimer. This helps to improve the user’s experience of our website – for example, it avoids a user from repeatedly being asked to consent to the same terms.
  • Session management:  The software that runs our website uses cookies for technical purposes needed by the internal workings of our servers. For instance, we use cookies to distribute requests among multiple servers, authenticate users and determine what features of our website they can access, verify the origin of requests, keep track of information about a user’s session and determine which options or pages to display in order for our website to function.
  • Functional purposes:  Functional purpose cookies store information that is needed by our applications to process and operate.  For example, where transactions or requests within an application involve multiple workflow stages, cookies are used to store the information from each stage temporarily, in order to facilitate the completion of the overall transaction or request.

 

Third-party cookies & cookies used by our service providers

Cookies can be placed by us directly or our service providers. In addition, cookies can also be placed by third parties without our knowledge or outside of our control. If you click on the “I refuse” bottom, we shall do everything in our power to block both our cookies and third-party cookies. However, please note some of those third-party websites and service providers may place cookies or track your browsing activities with other technologies outside of our control. In this section you will find additional information about our service providers:

  • We use Google Analytics, which is a programme that gathers information about the use of our website by using cookies. The data gathered is used to create reports about the use of our website. For more information, please review Google’s privacy policy. Additional information is available here.
  • We also use “Facebook pixel” on our website. The Facebook pixel is a snippet of JavaScript code that allows us to track visitor activity on your website. It collects information about the users and use of our website. The information is used to personalise Facebook advertisements and to analyse the use of our website. To find out more about the Facebook pixel, please review Facebook’s cookie policy and privacy policy. The Facebook cookie policy includes information about controlling Facebook’s use of cookies to show you advertisements. If you have a Facebook account, you can adjust your advertisement preferences by following this link.
  • We use Twitter cookies to monitor the activities of our Twitter account(s). For more information, please review Twitter’s cookie policy. If you have a Twitter account, you can adjust your advertisement and cookie preferences here.
  • We use LinkedIn cookies to monitor the activities on our LinkedIn account(s). For more information, please review LinkedIn’s privacy policy. If you have a LinkedIn account, you can adjust your advertisement and cookie preferences here.

 

How to change your cookie preferences

As mentioned above, you can refuse cookies that are not strictly necessary for our website to function by clicking on the “I refuse” bottom when first visiting the website.

If you wish to remove cookies set by this website from your browser in the future, you may delete them by adjusting your browser settings. To do so, you can follow the instructions provided by each browser by following the links below.  Please note that withdrawing your agreement to the use of cookies on this website will impair the functionality of this website.

(a)        https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647 (Chrome);

(b)        https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17442/windows-internet-explorer-delete-manage-cookies (Internet Explorer);

(c)        https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4468242/microsoft-edge-browsing-data-and-privacy (Edge);

(d)        https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/safari/manage-cookies-and-website-data-sfri11471/mac (Safari).

 

Changes to this Notice 

We retain the right to update or change any part of this Notice at any time without prior notification. Any changes will be published here immediately, and it is your responsibility to check back regularly. If we make material changes to this Notice, we will notify you by means of a prominent notice on this website prior to the change becoming effective.

 

Last update: May 2021

 

How to contact us

If you have any questions on the Data Protection or the Cookie Notice or our related practices or if you wish to exercise the above rights, please contact us by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at +32 (0)2 300 96 43.

You can also contact us by mail at [email protected].