Privacy statement Te noho tūmataiti

The Privacy Act requires us to tell you what personal information we collect and why we need it. We tell you our policy so you can trust us to handle your information with care and respect.

Key points about your privacy at Pharmac 

• We only collect personal information where we need it to do our work.
• We may collect your personal information either directly from you or from other people (such as your doctor or specialist) or agencies.
• We may create personal information about you when we carry out our work.
• We store all our data and information, including your personal information, securely.
• We protect our data and information with all reasonable technical and process controls.
• We only use or share your personal information to do the tasks for which we collected it or if permitted or required by law.
• You can ask us for a copy of your personal information at any time.

What we do with your personal information

How we use it

We will only use the personal information about you to deliver the services you or your health professional requests or to carry out our lawful functions.

These purposes include:

• making a decision about funding a medicine 
• considering your submission on a consultation
• sending you a newsletter or notice
• responding to an enquiry.

We may use your personal information to:

• consider and process an application made by you or on your behalf 
• contact any relevant health professional involved in your care, including the person who made an application on your behalf
• confirm details with the Ministry of Health, including in order to generate a claim number
• contact you about your request, enquiry or submission
• consider and respond to your enquiry
• moderate the content on our social media channels (including contacting you about this)
• improve our website and the delivery of our online services
• conduct internal statistical analysis and meet our reporting requirements.

When we share it

We do not generally share your personal information with third parties (unless a third party is acting on your behalf). However, we may share your personal information in the following circumstances:

• to get clinical advice from our advisory committees and/or third party clinicians to process an application to fund a treatment, for an individual or for everyone.
• to respond to your enquiry appropriately
• if you make a submission on a public consultation, we may publish your feedback as a standard part of the consultation process
• if we receive a request under the Official Information Act and we determine that the public interest outweighs your right to privacy (Section 9 of the Official Information Act)  
• We may share personal information with the Police or another government agency:
  • if required by law (for example to assist with the investigation of a criminal offence)
  • to report significant misconduct or breach of duty 
  • where there is a serious threat to health or safety  
  • if our staff are threatened or abused, we may refer this to the Police.

Storing your information

Pharmac follows the advice of the Government Chief Information Security Office for storing your personal information. We have many checks and controls in place to assure the security of our servers and the data they store.

Some personal information is stored with third parties as outlined below.

Third parties

We use third party systems to deliver a range of services. These third parties will store any personal information that you choose to give them. We assess how secure these services are before using them.

In-Tend UK

This service provides a secure system for tenders to be submitted to PHARMAC.

GETS (Government Electronic Tenders Service)

This service provides a secure system for tenders to be submitted to PHARMAC.

GETS privacy statement(external link) 

Salesforce 

Salesforce is the system underlying PharmConnect. Anyone making an application to fund a medicine must apply through PharmConnect.

Mailchimp

We use Mailchimp to distribute newsletters and notices. We ask for some information beyond your email address to better target our communications. You can unsubscribe from Mailchimp whenever you like.

Mailchimp privacy policy(external link)

Mentimeter

We use Mentimeter to enhance our engagement activities and to gather anonymous feedback from participants. Alternative methods for participating in our engagement activities and providing feedback are available. 

Mentimeter’s privacy policy(external link)

Social media

We use social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn to communicate about our work.

When you communicate with us using these services, the social networking service may collect any personal information you choose to provide it with for its own purposes. These services may track your use of our website.  

Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager

We use these tools to collect anonymous data about how people use our website. We use this data to improve our websites.

You can turn off ‘cookies’ in your web browser to avoid these services. However the quality of your web browsing experience may be reduced.

We collect the following information about your use of our website (though please note we do not associate this with your identity):

• the search terms you used
• the pages you accessed on our website and the links you clicked on
• the date and time you visited the site
• the referring site (if any) through which you clicked to our website
• your operating system (such as Windows 10)
• the type of web browser you use (such as Mozilla Firefox)

While Google collects your I.P. address, we cannot see this.

Google’s privacy policy(external link)  

Hotjar

We use Hotjar to provide a feedback widget on the site, conduct surveys and collect anonymous data about people using our website. We use this data to improve the website.

You decide if you want to include any information which can identify you.

You can turn off ‘cookies’ in your web browser to avoid Hotjar. However the quality of your web browsing experience may be reduced.

About your privacy and Hotjar(external link) 

SurveyMonkey

From time to time we conduct surveys to better understand you and the services you need from Pharmac. We use SurveyMonkey to collect information. You are in control of how much personal information you give.

SurveyMonkey’s privacy statement(external link)  

Requesting your personal information 

Anyone can ask Pharmac for the information we hold about them. Follow our guide to making a Privacy Act request.