Using the Beating the Blues website or online tool means you agree to this privacy policy and the Terms of use. Please read them carefully. If you don’t agree, please don’t use the site or tool.  

About the Privacy Policy

• In consideration for Beating the Blues (“Beating the Blues”, “We” or “Us”) allowing you the right to access and use the Beating the Blues and beatingtheblues.co.nz service (“Beating the Blues”) you agree to be bound by this privacy policy. This right is non-exclusive and non-transferable and limited by this privacy policy.  
• This privacy policy applies to any user of Beating the Blues whether they are a visitor, user, client, health professional or otherwise. 
• By using Beating the Blues you agree to be bound by this privacy policy, which shall take effect immediately the first time you use Beating the Blues. If you do not agree to be bound by all these privacy policies please do not access, use and/or contribute to Beating the Blues. 
• Beating the Blues is part of Manage My Health and by using Beating the Blues, you are also obliged to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy of Manage My Health found on the website.

Introduction

• Beating the Blues powered by Manage My Health is committed to protecting your privacy through its secure information technology services, Manage My Health, and its strict adherence with the Privacy Act 2020 (Privacy Act), together with the requirements of the Health Information Privacy Code 2020 (or any replacement code of practice or other regulation issued under the Privacy Act).
• Reference to Beating the Blues in this Privacy Policy includes any person or organisation to which it may licence or assign its rights and obligations.

Collection of your personal information

• We collect personal information about you in order to enable you to register for our services and to use Beating the Blues. The personal information we collect may include your name, date of birth, e-mail address gender, National Health Index Number (NHI) if known, and ethnicity.
• Password protection: To enhance the security and privacy of user accounts Beating the Blues users are required to establish and maintain secure passwords. Users shall choose passwords that comply with the specified security guidelines, incorporating a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. It is the responsibility of each user to safeguard their password and refrain from sharing account access credentials. Users are encouraged to stay informed about best practices for password protection and adhere to the specified security measures to mitigate the risk of unauthorised access and protect the confidentiality of personal information within Beating the Blues.
• We may request other optional information necessary for our lawful purpose connected to our functions, but we clearly indicate that such information is optional. You can review and update your account information at any time. You can modify, add, or delete any optional account information by signing into your Manage My Health account and editing your account profile only if you are a  Manage My Health user.
• We may also collect health information from you, such as your medical history, symptoms, lab results, medication and prescription details, clinical notes, and health services you are currently being or have been provided, only to the extent you choose to include this information in your records if you are a Manage My Health user.
• Subject to your Health Provider’s privacy policy, with your authorisation, we may also collect personal and health information about you directly from your Health Provider, but only to the extent that such information is necessary for us to provide certain services to you and/or your Health Provider.
• Communication about the suicidal risk thoughts while using Beating the Blues: Each week, clients are asked if they have had any suicidal thoughts; and, if so, how often and how seriously they have planned to carry it out.
• Upon registration for Beating the Blues, should you find that it is not fulfilling your intended purpose, or any other factors prompt you to consider opting out of Beating the Blues, it is advisable to engage in open and transparent communication, particularly if Beating the Blues was prescribed by a healthcare provider. If you have self-registered for Beating the Blues, you retain the freedom to discontinue the program at your discretion.

Use of personal information

1. • Beating the Blues collects and uses your personal information to operate, improve and deliver Beating the Blues or carry out the transactions you have requested. These uses may include:

1. • • providing Manage My Health and related services;
     • providing you with more effective customer service including by tailoring content or healthcare recommendations to your personal circumstances;
     • making Manage My Health or its services easier to use by eliminating the need for you to repeatedly enter the same information or to share information with third parties that you have already shared with Manage My Health;
     • performing research and analysis aimed at improving our products, services and technologies;
     • displaying content and health promotions that are customised to your interests and preferences;
     • using aggregated information (which has identifying information removed) to improve the quality of the services offered on Beating the Blues, for marketing of Beating the Blues and for general analysis or population health statistics;
     • gathering and analysing health statistics (in a form in which you cannot be identified) to allow planning of effective healthcare services within your region. This information is extremely valuable as it allows the limited healthcare services to be targeted to the needs of the population, which in turn potentially provides benefits to you and your family.

1. • Beating the Blues does not use your individual account and record information from Beating the Blues for marketing without Beating the Blues first asking for and receiving your opt-in consent.
   • We will not use personal information for purposes other than described above, unless:

1. • • we have your consent (or consent of the person whose personal information you have provided); or
     • we are permitted or required to do so by law.

Sharing your personal health information

1. • We will only disclose personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy, in accordance with your specific instructions or authorisation, and/or in accordance with the specific instructions or authorisation of the person whose personal information you have provided. We may disclose your personal information to:
     • your Health Provider, including other doctors, nurses or physicians within your Health Provider’s practice. This will be expanded in later versions of Beating the Blues to other health professionals you authorise and an optional “trust list” functionality which will allow you to grant access to other individuals involved with your care;
     • with your authorisation, to other health service providers (including specialists and allied health providers including health and wellness providers and insurers who you may be referred to or connected with as part of a function of Beating the Blues;
     • emergency services personnel (including as part of the Medic Alert system, where you are part of this programme) who may assist you in an emergency situation;
     • our service providers that are providing a service to you or us in relation to Beating the Blues, for example, third party web site hosting; packaging, mailing; answering customer questions about products and services; and sending information about our products, special offers, and other new services.
   • Manage My Health Limited may also disclose personal information if we believe on reasonable grounds that such disclosure is necessary to:
     • enforce this Privacy Policy or any other relevant terms and conditions;
     • comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal processes; served on Beating the Blues;
     • protect and defend the rights or property of Beating the Blues and our family of web sites; or
     • is otherwise required or permitted by law.

Security and Storage of information

• We will take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information that we hold is accurate, complete, up-to date, stored in a secure environment, and protected from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. Beating the Blues follows strict internal procedures in collecting, storing and disclosing information about you.
• When any information is uploaded to your Beating the Blues account, it is sent over the Internet using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This method encrypts the information to help prevent others from reading it while it’s in transit from your computer to Manage My Health.
• Any information or records you maintain with a Beating the Blues account will be hosted on servers in a secure environment by a commercially reputable hosting vendor using best practice security techniques. Beating the Blues is protected by a reputable network firewall and daily backups are performed to allow system restores to be performed in a disaster recovery situation.
• If you choose to access your medical records held by your Health Provider through Beating the Blues, you are consenting to Beating the Blues storing that information on your behalf and obtaining periodic updates to the records via your Healthcare Provider.
• Information submitted to Beating the Blues from your Healthcare Provider is encrypted during transmission. Your information provided to you via a web browser is encrypted during transmission using the highest standard available today using VeriSign Digital Certificates. This provides at least 128-bit encryption or 256-bit encryption if you are using the latest version of the web browser. Information provided to you from your Healthcare Provider cannot be modified within the system.
•  Beating the Blues will only retain your personal information for as long as it is needed for the purposes for which it was collected (or any other purpose you have consented to) or for so long as we are required by law to retain it. If your account or access is terminated, we will delete your personal information.
• Access to your account will be blocked following 5 failed attempts to logon. Your account is unblocked by using the forgotten password function on the website. If your account is blocked because you have abused your access privileges, you will be offered the opportunity to obtain a copy of any personal / health information you have entered. In these circumstances information provided by your Healthcare Provider will not be provided and must be obtained from your Healthcare Provider.
• If you’re using Beating the Blues to upload sensitive data (such as health information), you should properly secure your computer. To help do this, you can use anti-spyware and virus protection software. You can also restrict access to your computer (for example, by using a strong password for your computer login and a network firewall).
• Beating the Blues cannot be held liable in any way for events beyond our control or in any way for accidental or unauthorised access of your information.

Your rights to access and request correction of your personal information

• Generally, upon your request, we must confirm whether we hold personal information about you and provide access to that personal information. We can only give you access to personal information we hold about you, and not about any other person (unless you are acting on that person’s behalf and have acceptable written authorisation). There are some exceptions where we may refuse to give you access under law (for example, where disclosing the information may pose a serious threat to any person’s life, health, or safety).
• You may ask us to correct information about you if you think that it is wrong. We may not agree that the information needs correcting, but in this case, we will explain our reasons for declining your request. If this happens you may ask us to attach a statement of correction to our records which sets out what you believe the information should be.

How we use de-identified data, aggregate information, and statistics

• Beating the Blues may use de-identified usage data (de-identified data refers to data from which all personally identifiable information has been removed) from Beating the Blues to report on usage statistics and usage analysis to the Ministry of Health as a requirement as Beating the Blues is funded by the Ministry of Health for the betterment of general wellbeing of New Zealanders. The report contains the name of the practice the prescriber belongs to; the name of the prescriber and how many patients the prescriber has referred has enrolled for the program.  This de-identified usage data will never identify or be associated with any individual account.

Unique Identifiers

• The primary unique identifier used within Beating the Blues powered by Manage My Health is an email address of your choice, which you have used to register and continue the programme.  This identifier may be linked to your National Health Index number, if known, which is allocated to you when you use a service provided by a public health authority such as a public hospital or General Practice. No other unique identifier is linked to you by Manage My Health™.
• While an email address is globally unique, we cannot guarantee that it will always be assigned to the same person. If an email address is no longer used by an individual, it is then typically ‘made available’ to anyone else who wants to use it, much the same as a phone number.
• We are aware that over time you may change your email account; in order to continue the sessions, you need to use the email id that you have registered with.  If you use a new email id to enrol to the programme you have to start the sessions from the beginning as the system will identify you as a new user.

Use of cookies

• We only use temporary cookies on Beating the Blues which are deleted upon you signing out. The cookies contain no personal information.

Changes to this privacy policy

• We may occasionally update this Privacy Policy. When we do, we will revise the “last updated” date at the top of the Privacy Policy. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed about how we are helping to protect the personal information we collect. Your continued use of Beating the Blues following any update constitutes your acceptance to such updates.

Enforcement of this privacy policy

• As Beating the Blues is powered by Manage My Health; Manage My Health must comply with privacy legislation when dealing with personal information. If you would like any further information or have any queries, problems or complaints relating to our Privacy Policy or our information handling practices in general, please contact us at: Address: Privacy Officer, Manage My Health Limited, Level 1, 48 Market place, Viaduct Harbour, Auckland 1010 or Email: btb.support@managemyhealth.co.nz