HealthUnlocked FAQs
- What is HealthUnlocked?
- What are HealthUnlocked communities?
- How does HealthUnlocked finance its work?
- What do we promise to our users?
- What do we offer to charities?
- How do we protect users' data?
What is HealthUnlocked?
HealthUnlocked is a private company that transforms patient experiences into clear understanding. We do this by enabling people to share online their health experiences and information that helps decision-making, improves health and well-being, and provides support.
The company was founded by Matt Jameson-Evans, an NHS doctor and campaigner, and Jorge Armanet an entrepreneur and innovator in the use of social media technology.
What are HealthUnlocked communities?
HealthUnlocked communities are safe, lively and supportive online spaces designed for patients, their families and carers to share information on their health experiences.
We develop the communities for charities and patient groups and they manage them. The patient groups trust us to use our proprietary, web-based technology to build these genuinely helpful communities on their behalf.
How does HealthUnlocked finance its work
HealthUnlocked communities are free to the user, free to the charities.
To be able to fund and develop our free online services HealthUnlocked works with research partners. These include our partner charities, healthcare commissioners, hospitals, academic institutions, and private researchers (eg medical device companies and pharmaceutical companies) who want to help support our development or learn from the experiences of the platform users.
HealthUnlocked may provide de-identified or aggregate information as research from our platform but only in cases where users consent to share information. No personal identifiable information is shared with research partners.
Only our charity research partners can provide content directly to our patient communities.
We also run special projects for research partners for initiatives that share knowledge and experiences. See an example here.
The trust and confidence of our users always comes first and a user can delete the information they posted on a community.
What do we promise to our users?
If users say we can't share certain information about them then we won't. Specifically this means:
- Users can choose, at any time, whether or not their healthcare experiences are shared with research partners to improve insight and understanding.
- We will be upfront about who our research partners are. Learn more about our research partners.
- We won't share users' personal details, such as email addresses, with anybody else unless we have express permission to do so.
- We will protect personal details using regulated data protection tools and practices.
- We'll keep the communities free from commercial intrusion by making sure people don't use blogs or questions to advertise their products.
What do we offer to charities?
A free, online community, branded with a charity's colours and logo. HealthUnlocked takes care of the set up, maintenance and support leaving charities to focus on helping their communities create useful content and to gain insight from the experiences shared online.
How do we protect users' data?
Confidentiality
The users' details are always safe and robustly protected. We have secure connections (HTTPS) with 128bit encryption certificates across all the areas where personal details are used and stored.
Valuing your data protection
All passwords assigned during the sign up process are encrypted before storing, and cannot be decrypted. This gives an additional layer of security and ensures the integrity of the database.
Our server is hosted in a protected environment with secure backups performed regularly. Additionally, a managed Cisco ASA firewall provides round-the-clock security and protection from hacking. We update our security system regularly and perform ongoing research on new practices and technologies that can improve our services.
