How your personal information will be processed?

"Personal data" means information relating to a natural (living) person or "data subject", which can be used to identify the person.

How a person or organisation can or cannot lawfully use your personal data is set out in the Data Protection Act 2018 and General Data Protection Regulations, or GDPR.

The responsibility for making sure your personal information is used within the law, rests with the organisation which determines the purposes for and way your personal information is to be collected and used. This makes this organisation the data controller for this personal information.

Where an NHS trust collects information about you in your patient health records, they are the data controllers for this information. The Avon CAP study (University of Bristol) will be provided with a copy of these records under a data sharing agreement with the organisation that originally collected your information. Once the study has received your record, the University of Bristol will be the data controller for this information (but can only use the data in line with the terms of the data sharing agreement).

How the data will be used?

The research team will analyse this data to work out the burden of disease. We will also try to answer other important questions, such as whether patients with underlying medical conditions are at increased risk of certain causes of infection.

Who we share your information with and why?

We will want to share some of the data collected through the research with our study funders (Pfizer Inc), but will never share individuals’ names, postcode, NHS number or date of birth with them.

It is important to share the results of this study with other scientists and healthcare organisations. We will publish what we learn from this study in scientific journals. We will also publish results at national and international research and health service delivery meetings. When we do this, we will make sure that you cannot identify any individual in the publication.

If you have any concerns, or want to know more about your rights, please go to Your Rights.