Merck Sharp & Dohme Limited Internet Privacy Policy

Effective as of 20 March, 2009

Overview The Data Protection Act 1998 (the "Act") regulates the processing of information relating to you and grants you various rights in relation to your personal data.

Merck Sharp & Dohme Limited ("MSD") is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected and that it complies with its obligations under the Act. MSD is the data controller for the purposes of the Act.

This Statement explains how we use the information which we collect about you online when you use our Web sites and other online resources.

The information we collect from you. When you visit our Web site at diabetesneweragents.co.uk and/or when you request any of our resources or services (if any), we may collect personal information from you such as your name, e-mail address and clinical specialty. We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with the Web site and, if you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence. We may ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.

We gather this information to allow us or our service providers (if any) to fulfil any requests from you for any of our online resources, which may include books, promotional aids  articles relating to your fields of interest and various conference and training opportunities, as well as using it to develop and improve our services.

The information we collect from your computer or other electronic device. We may collect information about your computer, including, where available, your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information to our content providers (if any). These are statistical data about our users' browsing actions and patterns, and do not identify an individual.

For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive. They help us to improve our website and to deliver a better and more personalised service. They enable us: to estimate our audience size and usage pattern; to store information about your preferences and so allow us to customize our Web site according to your individual interests; to speed up your searches and to recognise you when you return to our Web site.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our Web site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to our Web site.

Uses made of information.  Your information is stored on secure servers. We do not disclose information about identifiable individuals to our content providers (if any), but we may provide them with aggregate information about our users. We may also use such aggregate information to help us or our content providers (if any) reach the kind of audience we (or they) want to target.

We may disclose information about you to Merck & Co., Inc. ("Merck") in the United States and its worldwide Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) subsidiaries where data protection laws may not be as comprehensive as those in the United Kingdom. Your information may also be available to Merck's affiliates, or companies working as agents on behalf of Merck. The use and disclosure of personal information by external individuals and organisations acting on behalf of Merck and/or MSD is governed by contracts that require personal information to be protected appropriately. Personal information about you will only be used and disclosed by MSD and individuals, companies and organisations working on its behalf, in a manner consistent with this policy, other applicable privacy notices and as expressly permitted or required by applicable law.

 We or our content providers (if any)  may provide links to other Websites over which we have no control. The information practices of these linked websites are not covered by this privacy policy and you should check these sites carefully to find out how they use your personal information.

If you contact us. Please note the name of the Web site or other online resource to which you provided the information, as well as the nature of the information that you provided. We will use reasonable efforts to respond promptly to the requests, questions or concerns you may have regarding our use of personal information about you. Except where required by law, MSD cannot ensure a response to questions or comments regarding topics unrelated to this policy or MSD's and/or Merck's privacy practices

Changes to our privacy policy. MSD may update this policy periodically. MSD reserves the right to modify, add or remove portions of the privacy statement at its discretion. Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate notified to you by email.

This policy was last updated on 20 March, 2009.