The International Society of Hypertension (ISH) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
This Policy sets out how and why we (ISH) use your personal data, and how we protect your privacy when doing so.
Please read the following carefully to understand how we will use your 'personal data'. 'Personal data' means any information relating to you, through which you can be identified either directly or indirectly such as name and contact details, biographical information or information about your interests/qualifications.
There are types of personal data that are more sensitive in nature and therefore require a higher level of protection; this type of data is classified as ‘special categories of personal data’.
The ISH has appointed Canica to provide membership and digital services for the ISH online presence and act as a Data Processor for the Society. We have a contract in place with Canica such that the ISH decides how data is used, and we instructed Canica to hold it securely and retain it for the period we instruct.
We keep this Policy under regular review and it may be modified from time to time. Please check back here for further updates. This policy was last updated on 29 January 2025.
Please click the below headings to jump to the relevant page(s)
Membership
Membership Payments
Journal of Hypertension
Conferences, Events and Mailing Lists
Awards, Grants and Scholarships
Mentoring Programme
Working Group and Committee Members
Corporate Members
Surveys and competitions
Website
What information we collect
How we will use your information
How long we will keep your information
Where and how we store your information
Third-party services
Data Retention
The Legal Basis for Processing
Your rights
Access to personal data
Complaints or queries
Data Representative in the EU and EEA
Summary
For clarity, in this policy, ‘Member’ incorporates all types of membership;
Members
Associate Members
Trainees
Any of the above from Research4Life designated countries
Any Members with a specific designation – ISH Fellow, Distinguished, Emeritus or Honorary Fellow
Corporate Members
When you apply as a Member of ISH, your personal data is stored on a central database using information from your application. This information is periodically updated at your request, and from surveys that we conduct which you participate in.
As part of your relationship with us, you may be asked to support or get involved in some of the Society’s activities, such as joining a committee or working group, becoming a referee, speaking at events, or attending meetings or events. You will also receive communications from the Society, such as Hypertension News, the monthly E-Bulletin and Society updates from which you are welcome to unsubscribe from at any time.
Factual information, such as your name, the year you were elected, any awards you have received, reports for which you were on the Working Group, and any Committees you have served on may be made available in the public domain through our website, and in reports where relevant. Records of conferences or major workshops we hold (alone or jointly) may also be published, including the names of those attending.
The ISH collects and stores the following information about its member:
Mandated information: Name, Title, Country, City, ISH Society Number
Non-mandated information: Date of Birth, Telephone, Email address, Gender, Employer Details (current institute/organisation), Job Title, Professional fields of interest.
Where applicable: Record of Payments, Activities, Event Registrations, and Curriculum Vitae.
We will hold your personal information for as long as you are a member. After your membership has expired, we will keep your information for a period of up to 4 years. Your CV will be removed within 1 year after your membership has been approved unless you have expressed interest in contributing to an ISH initiative.
If you are unsuccessful, your application and identifying data such as name, date of birth and contact details will be retained by us for 3 years after which your personal data will be anonymised.
ISH does not collect any data that is defined under the UK GDPR defined ‘Special Category’ such as racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data, health, sex life and sexual orientation to become a member.
You are under no obligation to remain in contact with the Society following the end of your membership. In accordance with your data protection rights, we will respect any request from you to remove the data we hold on you from our database and to refrain from contacting you thereafter for the any of the below mentioned purposes.
Information we hold about you is securely stored in a database on the ISH website, which is hosted by DigitalOcean. To find out how DigitalOcean handles your data, please see their privacy policy and statement of GDPR Compliance and Terms of Use.
https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/privacy-policy
All membership payments are encouraged to be made through the interactive payment site of the membership registration site. The payment processing company is Stripe and they will process any credit card payments on ISH’s behalf. For Stripe’s privacy policy and how they process your data, please visit: https://stripe.com/gb/privacy
If payment via credit card is not possible, ISH can provide bank details for you to pay by bank transfer or send in a cheque to make payment.
ISH will securely store and hold details of the bank/cheque payment for up to 7 years and will only include any details you have provided as a reference and the amount paid.
ISH’s official journal is the Journal of Hypertension. Members can opt to subscribe to the Journal of Hypertension directly with the publisher (Wolters Kluwer) via the ISH membership portal. ISH will not supply the publisher (Wolters Kluwer with any personal details regarding members or handle any related payments.
For members coming from Research4Life designated countries (only) and who are eligible to receive a free online journal subscription, we will share the following details with Wolters Kluwer to enable them to process your free online subscription:
To find out how Wolters Kluwer handles your data, please see their privacy policy.
https://journals.lww.com/jhypertension/_layouts/15/oaks.journals/privacy.aspxBy registering for a conference or event with ISH, you agree to share the “ordinary” personal data you provide with the other delegates who will attend the meeting in person or online, to enable effective networking and business exchanges to take place.
These events are usually organised by third parties on behalf of ISH and will have their own privacy policy in place. You will be asked to acknowledge the privacy policy and data processing policy for each event whilst registering. You may be asked for dietary requirements in addition to the “ordinary’ personal data” for confirmation of allergies or dietary preference.
Mailing Lists
When you sign up to receive news from ISH, either via the mailing list form or when you sign up to attend a conference/event and give us permission to contact you in future, we will use your data to send you regular emails about upcoming events, research or Society news which we think you might be interested in and your name and email address will be added to our communication system, Mailchimp.
Mailchimp is regarded a data processor as it collates unsubscribe requests when delivering our email marketing campaigns. We rely on your consent to process the personal data you provide us for communication purposes, such as this and we may request consent when you sign up to our newsletters via our website or at one of our events. If at any point you want to withdraw your consent, you can click the unsubscribe link on the email or change your preferences by clicking ‘update your details’ at the bottom of the email.
We may also send emails to communicate our activities to your email address if we believe you will find them of interest and its necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests.
We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using Mailchimp’s technology to help us monitor and improve our email marketing.
For more information on Mailchimp’s Privacy Policy and legal information:
https://mailchimp.com/legal/
Speakers
We may contact some individuals to speak at our events if you are a specialist in a chosen topic area. We may hold your details (such as contact and bank details you provide to us) in order to make arrangements for the event, to pay any agreed expenses, to record that you spoke at the event and to record if you tell us that you are interested in speaking at future events.
ISH’s Awards Programme includes all awards listed under
https://ish-world.com/activities/awards-prizes.html
The Society has occasionally awarded grants and scholarships, such as travel grants and provided personal data will be processed in the same way as that for the award applications.
ISH uses personal data submitted by users of our Awards Nominees for the following purposes:
In assessing your application/nomination, we share details of your application with Awards or other relevant Committee, or other relevant, members who are all members of the Society.
Nominators
When you complete a nomination for an ISH award, as a nominator you submit your information and usually that of the nominee in an application form. Any personal data that you provide is used for the purpose of reviewing the nomination. Some of the information you submit may be published on ISH’s website and social media channels, if the nominated individual is selected to receive the award. You should seek permission from the nominee before submitting their details to us.
Nominees
When you complete a nomination for an ISH award, grant or scholarship, as a nominee you submit your information in an application form. Any personal data that you provide is used for the purpose of reviewing the nomination and, if you are selected as the winner, some of the information you submitted may be published on the ISH website and in social media, the E-Bulletin, Hypertension News and the Journal of Hypertension.
We may publish details of successful awards, grants and scholarships, including your name, organisation, title, summary of the award, and the value of your award/grant/scholarship on our public website, within Hypertension News, E-Bulletins, during the Biennial Awards Ceremony or via the Journal of Hypertension, some of which may be accessible from outside of the UK and the EEA.
We may contact you for your consent to use information relating to you or your award/grant/scholarship in the promotion of ISH’s programmes for example in the form of case studies, blog post and other similar activities.
Any information you elect to provide during the application processes relating to gender, age, disability, ethnic origin, or nationality will be used only for the purposes of monitoring diversity and equality and stored confidentially in accordance with applicable legal obligations. Diversity data is reported on anonymously.
Personal data may be provided by third parties as part of the application process, and this data may be processed for the purposes of verifying relevant details related to award/grant applications.
ISH’s mentoring programme uses personal data submitted via the ISH website or email for registered mentees and mentors for the following purposes:
To facilitate the mentoring matching process, which is informed by general research field, geographical location and organisation, and interests expressed by both parties.
Contacting you about activities relating to the programme, to check whether additional support may be provided for pairs or to help inform evaluation of processes including registration, strategy or operation procedures. Contact may be in the form of surveys, questionnaires or direct communication from the Society main office or members of the Mentorship and Training Committee who are all members of the Society.
In the matching process we share the name and organisation of either party of a potential pair and seek consent of both parties prior to confirmation of the match. Should you not wish to be paired you may inform us, and another match will be suggested. Once pairs are matched it is the responsibility of the mentee to drive forward the relationship in a communication framework agreed by both parties. We may contact you for your consent to use information relating to you or your experience in the promotion of ISH’s mentoring programme for example in the form of case studies, blog posts and similar activities.
Your personal registration data will be retained for at least four years from the date of your registration, after which time you will be invited to re-register as a mentor should you wish to continue. The names of matched pairs will be transferred to our historical archives at the conclusion of this period. Personal data stored in our archives will be held for the purpose of historical public and research interest and will not be made accessible in line with our archiving closure period for administrative records.
If at any point you would no longer like to participate in the programme you can let us know via this contact form. Please ensure you tell us if you would like to opt-out from all mentoring programme opportunities or just for a set period.
When you are invited to join a working group, advisory group or committee, we will hold your details in order to send you information about meetings related to the group. We will also include your details (typically name, role and affiliation) in the notes of those meetings, and your name and the contact email address provided in meeting invites. If you are expected to attend a meeting in person, we will hold your bank account details on file in order to deal with any expense requests if applicable.
The responsibilities of joining a group, and the intended use of your information, will be made clear at the outset. The names of working group, regional advisory group and committee members may be included in reports and other written outputs and may be published on the Society’s website.
Your responsibilities may involve working in partnership with similar organisations, such as other national academies, academy networks and government departments, in order to oversee particular pieces of work. Your details may need to be shared with those bodies in these instances.
As we identify and develop relationships with our Corporate Members and prospective Corporate Members, we collect the following types of information:
How much of this information we collect depends on the type of relationship we have with you and the information we build in the course of your relationship with us. We do not store information that is classed as 'sensitive' or 'special category' personal data, or any data regarding criminal offences that you share with us, unless there is a clear and valid reason for us having to process this particular data that complies with applicable law, primarily that we have your explicit consent, and/or that you have made that information public and/or we have to process that data in connection with a legal claim.
Provide you with the information you asked for, such as;
We use research and screening techniques in order to tailor our communications effectively to our sponsors. This helps us to understand sponsors’ motivations for supporting the Society’s work and means that we can speak to sponsors about projects and sizes of support that they might be willing to provide.
When conducting this research, we may analyse geographic, demographic, academic, or professional information relating to you in order to better understand your preferences and possible interests in or affiliations with the Society’s work. In doing this, we may use additional information from third party sources when it is available. Such information is compiled using publicly available data about you from reputable sources such as listed directorships or company shareholder information on the UK Companies House website, or information that you have chosen to put into the public domain such as on corporate/institutional websites of organisations where you work or you have a publicised association with or where you have made comments in the press.
We may also use publicly available information from these and other sources (such as mainstream news and media) to gather information regarding prospective donors in order to detect and reduce fraud/credit risk as well as for 'due diligence' purposes to safeguard our reputation.
We need to keep the details of financial transactions for seven years after the financial year of a corporate sponsors last payment, in the event of a tax or banking enquiry. All other information about you will be kept while we have an ongoing relationship with you.
We use our membership database software (on the ISH website), SurveyMonkey or Mailchimp (our mailing system) to process feedback, contests, event subscriptions, and survey information that you submit to us. Participation is voluntary and you have a choice whether or not to disclose any information requested.
Information requested may include contact information (such as name and delivery address) and demographic information. If you are a contest winner, we will use your contact information to notify you and award prizes. We collect feedback and diversity monitoring anonymously. Information from our surveys will also be used for the purposes of monitoring or improving the functionality of our website(s) or any of our other products or services. Your data will be retained for up to four years and will be deleted at the earliest possible opportunity.
SurveyMonkey and Mailchimp act as data processors on our behalf and will not share any information that you submit to us. For more information on how they process your data, please see privacy policies and legal information below from SurveyMonkey and Mailchimp.
What information we collect
We analyse data about traffic to the ISH website using Google Analytics. The data available to us is aggregated and anonymised, so that we cannot access personal information, such as IP addresses, and cannot identify how any individual has used the website.
We may collect information about your computer, including your operating system and browser type, for system administration and in order to create reports. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns and does not identify any individual.
The only cookies in use on our site are for Google Analytics and to allow functionality to the members’ area. Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that helps website owners understand how visitors engage with their website. Google Analytics customers can view a variety of reports about how visitors interact with their website so that they can improve it.
Like many services, Google Analytics use first-party cookies to track visitor interactions as in our case, where they are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We then use the information to compile reports and to help us improve our site.
Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive. These cookies are used to store information, such as the time that the current visit occurred, whether the visitor has been to the site before and what site referred the visitor to the web page.
How we will use your information
The information we collect from our Analytics is used to inform how we structure the ISH website and how content is arranged there.
How long we will keep your information
Aggregate data is not deleted from our system, so that we can track use of the website over time.
Where and how we store your information
We take the security of your data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our committee members or suppliers in the proper performance of their duties.
Data that we collect is hosted and stored on DigitalOcean’ servers, based in the US.
By using our website, you consent to the collection and use of this information by us. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this website, so that you are always aware of what information we have and collect, how we may utilise it and under what circumstances we may decide to disclose it to third parties.
We will never sell, trade, or rent your personal data to others. However, we may share your personal data with third parties who provide services to us and process data on our behalf under our instructions (called ‘Data Processors’). Those data processors may only use your personal data as necessary to provide the relevant services and are bound by contracts with us that limit their use of personal data. Depending on your relationship with us and your use of our services, it is likely that your personal data will be disclosed to third party processors:
Canica (ISH Membership and digital services for the ISH online presence)
Xero (Invoice processing software)
Journal of Hypertension/Wolters Kluwer
Council of the International Society of Hypertension
Executive Assistant of the International Society of Hypertension
Communications Officer of the International Society of Hypertension
Finance Officer of the International Society of Hypertension
Committee Chairs
Awards Committee
Mentorship and Training Committee
Organising Committee of next ISH Conference
Mailchimp (Newsletter, general mailings and surveys)
SurveyMonkey (Surveys)
We may retain certain records for legitimate reasons (including after your relationship with us has ended), for example to maintain records of articles published in our journals, to resolve any potential disputes and to comply with regulatory reporting obligations.
We have a data retention policy that sets out the different periods we retain personal data for in respect of relevant purposes, in accordance with our duties under applicable data protection law.
The criteria we use for determining these retention periods are based on:
We will process your personal data for the purposes identified in this document on the following legal bases:
Data protection law gives you the following rights:
If you wish to exercise any of the rights, please contact us at the email address dataprotection@ish-world.com or by post at The International Society of Hypertension, 29 Gildredge Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN21 4RU, UK. Please note that we may have to ask for further information or evidence to verify your identity before we can proceed with your request.
If you believe that any data we hold about you is incomplete or inaccurate, as well as informing us using the above contact details, you may be able to complete or correct such data using personalisation options that are available on our website.
We may receive personal data about you from a third party for the purposes of undertaking our activities. We will provide this information to you within a reasonable period after obtaining the personal data, but at the latest within one month, unless the provision of this information proves to be impossible or would involve a disproportionate effort.
ISH tries to be as open as it can be in terms of giving people access to their personal data. You can find out if we hold any personal data about you by making what's known as a 'subject access request'. If we do hold data about you we will:
To make a request for any personal data we may hold please write to our Data Protection Team, either at dataprotection@ish-world.com or at International Society of Hypertension. 29 Gildredge Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN21 4RU UK.
As above, we may have to ask for further information or evidence to verify your identity before we can proceed with your request and may ask for further information to help us locate any specific information you seek.
Usually we will have one month to respond to a subject access request. However, in case of complex requests, we may require a further two months to respond; if this is the case, we will let you know within one month that we need more time and provide the reason why. We may also charge for administrative time in dealing with any manifestly unfounded or excessive requests, or if you ask for further copies of your information following a request.
ISH aims to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal data. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate. We would also welcome any suggestions for improving our procedures.
This privacy notice was drafted with brevity and clarity in mind. It does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of our collection and use of personal data. However, we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed regarding our data processing practices. Any requests for this should be sent to our Data Protection Officer, Professor Débora Colombari (ISH Council Member, Brazil):
dataprotection@ish-world.comIf you are not happy with the way we have handled your data, or deal with any request above and are unable to resolve the issue with us personally, you can lodge a complaint with the UK data protection regulator who is the Information Commissioner's Office or with our representative in the EU, Prof. George Stergiou.
If you are an individual in the European Union and European Economic Area and want to raise a question to ISH, or otherwise exercise your rights in respect of your personal data, you may do so by:
We are committed to responsible data management. Data relating to identifiable individuals is only obtained, stored, processed and accessed:
For defined and justifiable purposes;
Securely and confidentially;
Respecting individuals' rights of review and objection
We value your trust in us.
