The Vision CRC, located on the University of New South Wales campus within the School of Optometry and Vision Science and the Institute for Eye Research are committed to observing the 10 National Privacy Principles as set out in the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act that came into effect on 21 December 2001.

To assist in complying with the Principles, the clinic is required to inform you of your rights in relation to the personal and sensitive information it holds about you and its use. The primary objective of the clinic is to conduct research studies using new technologies related to cornea and anterior segment of the eye.

The clinic maintains personal information i.e. your name, age, gender, contact details and sensitive information i.e. your ethnic status, your ocular and medical history and at a later stage a record of your ocular health on a database that is kept electronically. The information stored on our computer network is protected against misuse and unauthorized access by system design features and security access policies and procedures.

The clinic maintains personal and sensitive information so that:

a) each individual's health record and ocular status is identified appropriately and is used to monitor the status of your eyes;
b) future appointments to the clinic can be processed and provide you with information related to activities, events or projects that relate to the overall objective of the clinic;
c) it can be used as part of research information that may be presented to sponsoring organizations some of them who are located overseas, dissemination to scientific community but in such a case the information is coded using a unique ID or is presented as a grouped response;
d) it can be made available to other health service providers as part of a referral process if necessary; and
e) follow correct procedures required by law.

The clinic will only collect information when:

a) It is necessary to collect this information for the activities mentioned before;
b) It is collected lawfully and ethically and
c) It is collected from the individual to whom the information relates or where the information about an individual is collected from someone else, reasonable steps will be taken to ensure that the individual is made aware that this is being done.

Should you wish to know what details we hold about you or you believe that the personal information we hold is inaccurate, needs updating or you would like to be removed from the database, please contact the clinic at (02) 385 7516 so that action can be taken.