The Canadian Association of Registered Diagnostic Ultrasound Professionals (CARDUP) recognizes the importance of how we treat your personal information. CARDUP is committed to responsibly collecting, using and disclosing personal information and only to extent required to effectively conduct examination (including overseeing clinical skills assessments) and registration functions. CARDUP will always ensure that consent to collect personal information is obtained, and that the use and disclosure of that personal information is clearly defined and followed at all times. We recognize the importance of maintaining accurate records, securing personal information adequately, disposing of obsolete information appropriately, and providing you with access to the personal information we have on file for you. CARDUP is committed to being transparent about how we handle your personal information and to resolving any complaints effectively and to your satisfaction. To achieve this goal and to comply with the privacy legislation, Personal Information Protection and Electronics Document Act (PIPEDA), CARDUP has developed this Privacy Policy.
The term "personal information" means most types of information that can be linked to an identifiable individual. Your name, home address, date of birth, and other related information are examples of personal information. Information about your employment, such as, the name of your employer, your job title, work address, work telephone, and other related information is not usually considered personal information. However, since our records include both personal and employment contact information, CARDUP will treat these complete records as personal information. Identifiable personal information will directly identify an individual, or could indirectly identify an individual if linked with other information. Non-identifiable personal information can not foreseeably identify an individual.
The following definitions are also understood by CARDUP and have been used as a basis to develop our Privacy Policy.
CARDUP is accountable for the personal information that is required to conduct its examination and registration functions and which comes into its custody. CARDUP is responsible for ensuring that this personal information is protected in a manner consistent with this Privacy Policy. CARDUP will use reasonable means to hold its employees and those to whom it discloses personal information accountable for protecting this acquired personal information and will require that the use and security of this information conforms to the provisions in this Privacy Policy. Accountability for CARDUP compliance with its Privacy Policy falls within the responsibilities of the Executive Director of CARDUP or his / her designate, who will act as the CARDUP Privacy Officer. The Privacy Officer has the decision-making authority regarding the interpretation and application of this Privacy Policy and will respond to inquires or complaints.
As the national sonography registry organization in Canada, CARDUP oversees both the clinical and didactic credentialing examination process for registration candidates, and the registration renewal process for credentialed ultrasound professionals. In order to provide our services, CARDUP is required to collect personal information from examination applicants, registration candidates, and practising ultrasound professionals. This information is used both in our internal processes, and only when required, may be shared on a limited basis with third parties.
CARDUP collects, uses and / or discloses only the personal information necessary to provide its examination and registration services. The personal information we collect is used to:
CARDUP works with various consultants and educational agencies that may, in the course of their duties, have limited access to your personal information. These include third-party educational programs, examination facilitators, and other credentialing and regulatory organizations.
The information we may collect from you includes name, home and employment contact information, language preference, date of birth, ultrasound education information and academic qualifications (school, discipline, and graduation date and other), clinical skills assessment and examination information, ultrasound credentialing information, registration status with CARDUP and other professional ultrasound associations, CARDUP registration number, your correspondence with us, continuing education credit information, registration dues payment history, and financial information required to process examination and registry applications and related forms. The type of information collected will be dependant on the type assessment or examination requested and / or the type of registration or renewal requested or held.
We will use the information to confirm your identity, communicate with you, respond to your questions / comments, and send you important notices about the profession and CARDUP, your assessments and examinations, and your registration status. We also use personal information to protect the public from the unauthorized use of CARDUP credentials.
On occasion, CARDUP may conduct surveys We may also use your personal information to support our analysis and research on issues involving the ultrasound profession. Any research reports would only report on group information that will not identify you as an individual. If you choose to participate in such surveys, we will use your information to better understand current issues in the ultrasound profession. If you do not want your personal information to be used in this manner, please inform the CARDUP Privacy Officer who may be contacted as indicated at the end of this document.
Only with your informed consent will your personal information be collected from you and used and / or disclosed by CARDUP. This collection process may be in person, at our office, at examination sites, over the telephone or fax, through email or mail correspondence, or through your completion and submission of various CARDUP forms.
If you choose to provide personal information to CARDUP, we assume that you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as outlined in this Privacy Policy or as otherwise indicated at the time of collection, use and / or disclosure. Consent may be expressed or implied depending on the circumstances. If there are certain services offered by CARDUP for which you do not consent to the use of your personal information, then you may inform the CARDUP Privacy Officer directly, who may be contacted as indicated at the end of this document.
If CARDUP intends to use your personal information in a way not described in this Privacy Policy, we will inform you.
You have the right to refuse consent for CARDUP to obtain, use, and / or disclose your personal information and you have the right at any time to withdraw previously given consent. However, in doing so, you may be limiting or preventing the ability of CARDUP to provide you with the highest quality of service with respect to your clinical skills assessment, examination, and / or registration requirements.
The type of personal information collected will be only that required by CARDUP to carry out its clinical skills assessment, examination, and registration administration and processing, as well as, associated activities as defined by our Vision and Mission Statements. The collection of this personal information will occur by fair and lawful methods.
CARDUP does not use identifiable personal information for any other purpose other than those defined in this Privacy Policy. Use of this information for any other purpose will not occur without your informed consent. CARDUP will permit only authorized staff to access and use personal information on a “need-to-know” basis in order to execute their functions. Disclosure of your personal information to third parties, as indicated previously in this Privacy Policy, will only occur to the extent required to carry out the CARDUP service requested by you.
For reporting or statistical purposes, CARDUP may disclose or publish non-identifiable (e.g. aggregated) personal information only after reasonable precautions have been taken to ensure that individuals cannot foreseeably be identified by linking this information with other information.
CARDUP may use or disclose your personal information without consent in emergency circumstances or where required by law.
We will keep personal information only as long as it remains necessary or relevant for the identified purposes or as required by law. Some personal information (name, address, date of birth, credentialing date and discipline, education information, CARDUP registration number, and other relevant information) will be retained indefinitely in our secure database as CARDUP maintains a complete archive of its registrants and their status. Paper records are destroyed after their specific transaction year has passed.
CARDUP is committed to keeping records as accurate as possible. Your personal information will be as accurate, complete, and up-to-date as required for the purposes for which it is collected, used and / or disclosed. You have the right to correct or amend your personal information held by CARDUP. Please refer to the section discussing accessibility to your personal information for directions regarding correcting or amending your records.
We are committed to ensuring the safety and protection of the personal information we hold, and CARDUP undertakes rigorous confidentiality and information security measures. The safeguards we use are appropriate to the sensitivity of the personal information. The security safeguards protect personal information against loss or theft, as well as, unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification. CARDUP protects personal information that it holds or transmits regardless of the format in which it is held. Depending on the sensitivity, format, location, and storage of this personal information, safeguards may include office storage under lock and key, password protection for electronic records, and restricted access to only those staff requiring the information to provide specific CARDUP services to you.
All office staff members coming into contact with your personal information while providing you with a CARDUP service have been trained to safeguard the information and to always follow strict confidentiality policies.
We insure that third parties to which we disclose your personal information (in order to administer and process your clinical skills assessment, examination, or registration requirement) follow our confidentiality policies and the provisions of the Privacy Policy accordingly.
On occasion, some of our security procedures may cause you some minor delay when you wish to access your own personal information. Please understand that it is important for us to follow privacy procedures to ensure the security of your personal information.
When deemed obsolete, paper files of personal information are shredded and electronic information is deleted, and the hard drive physically destroyed when discarded.
You are entitled to know about CARDUP practices and policies in connection to the personal information that we collect, use and / or disclose in the administration and processing of our services and you have the right to challenge those practices and policies. CARDUP is committed to ensuring that our practices and policies relating to personal information are transparent, clearly stated, and open for scrutiny. In doing so, we have created this Privacy Policy, and will readily make available information about our practices and policies.
You may access your personal information held by CARDUP, challenge its accuracy and completeness and have it amended as appropriate, which may include the correction, deletion or addition of information. We will require you to confirm your identity before we may provide this access and, if you request amendments, certain changes may require that you supply supporting documentation (e.g. an update to your educational qualifications will require proof of graduation and / or an official transcript). Should you desire access to, or correction of, your personal information in our records, please send your request in writing to our Privacy Officer who may be contacted as indicated at the end of this document. We will respond to your request within a reasonable time and at minimal or no cost to you. You may have access to any personal information we have about you as long as it does not contain personal information on other people or interfere with a legal investigation. If for a particular reason, CARDUP can not honour your request, we will let you know with explanation within 30 days.
Upon your request regarding interchange of personal information with third parties, CARDUP will inform you of what this identifiable personal information is, and from whom it has been collected and / or to whom it has been disclosed.
If you have a comment, question or complaint about this Privacy Policy, our accompanying Website Privacy Policy, our handling of your personal information, or our compliance with our Privacy Policy, please submit your concern in writing to the CARDUP Privacy Officer by email at info@cardup.org or by mail to the address indicated at the end of this document. Our Privacy Officer will acknowledge receipt of your question or complaint; ensure that it is investigated promptly and that you are provided with a detailed formal response. If a complaint is found to be justified, CARDUP will take appropriate action, including, if necessary, amending its Privacy Policy.
For more information about your privacy rights in general, please contact the Privacy Commissioner of Canada through their website www.priv.gc.ca or by phone at 1-800-282-1376.
Please review the CARDUP Website Privacy Policy for further information regarding CARDUP’s collection, use and / or disclosure of your personal and non-personal information when you access the CARDUP website for information or to access our services.
CARDUP will continue to monitor and update our Privacy Policy as required so please review our Privacy Policy periodically for such changes. CARDUP will assume your continued use of our services following any posted updates to our Privacy Policy will represent your acceptance of these changes.
CARDUP does not collect personal information from visitors to our website. The CARDUP website may collect non-personal information about visits to the website. This non-personal information can not be used to personally identify the visitor. To help ensure the effectiveness of our website and our delivery of CARDUP services, our Webmaster may use this non-personal information for statistical analysis. This non-personal information will not be used by CARDUP for any other purpose.
We do not send unsolicited information or non-Association promotional emails to CARDUP registrants or to the public. Should you provide an email address to us, it will only be used to communicate to you individually about CARDUP business. Email addresses for various CARDUP Board and Committee members, Officers and employees are provided to you to facilitate communication regarding CARDUP services and business.
Our Website Privacy Policy applies only to the CARDUP website. Our website does contain links to other websites. Should you choose to link to another website, you will be subject to their privacy policies, and we recommend that you read other websites’ privacy policies especially if you plan to disclose any personal information to them.
CARDUP will continue to monitor and update our Website Privacy Policy as required so please review our Website Privacy Policy periodically for such changes. CARDUP will assume your continued use of our services following any posted updates to our Website Privacy Policy will represent your acceptance of these changes.
Please review the CARDUP Privacy Policy for further information regarding CARDUP’s collection, use and / or disclosure of your personal information as it is required to conduct its examination and registration functions. You may also contact our Privacy Officer should you have any questions, concerns, or complaints using the contact information provided below.
This Privacy Policy was last modified on February 19, 2010.