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Mortality Follow-Up Privacy Notice

The Oxford Monitoring System for Self-harm (previously known as the Oxford Monitoring System for Attempted Suicide) involves collecting information on everyone who presents to the emergency department at the general hospital in Oxford (John Radcliffe Hospital) following self-harm. We do this in order to monitor self-harm rates over time, and to investigate different aspects of self-harm behaviour and its outcomes, information which helps to improve patient care both locally and nationally.  

As part of our work we look at whether individuals we collect information on in the general hospital in Oxford are still alive, if they died, or if they have lost contact with the NHS - for example by leaving the country. To do this we securely share some patient identifiable information with services at NHS Digital who link these data to Civil Registration data and then provide us with the follow-up information about patients.  

The Oxford Monitoring System for Self-harm complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and NHS information governance procedures. It also has a strong information security and management policy to ensure that any identifiable information we hold remains confidential and safe. 

The University of Oxford is the ‘data controller’ for the Oxford Monitoring System for Self-harm, which includes the follow-up mortality data. The University is registered with the Information commissioner’s office – Registration number Z575783X.  You can find information about the University’s data protection team on their webpages at: https://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/councilsec/compliance/dataprotection/contacts/.  You can contact the data protection officer at the University of Oxford at:

Information Compliance Team 

Email: data.protection@admin.ox.ac.uk 

Postal address: University of Oxford, University Offices, Wellington Square, Oxford, OX1 2JD.

A limited amount of personal data, as listed below, is shared anonymously with similar self-harm monitoring projects based at the University of Manchester and Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, who in turn share their data with us, as part of the Multicentre Study of Self-harm in England https://www.psych.ox.ac.uk/research/csr/ahoj . 

This study is funded by the Department of Health. We do not share any names, addresses, dates of birth or NHS numbers of individuals included in the study, but we do share date and cause of death with the other centres. 

These personal data, which are related to the health of people who visited the hospital for self-harm, are processed for the purpose of academic research in the public interest (GDPR Article 9(2)(j); GDPR Article 6(1)(e)).

We will only retain these data for as long as we need it to fulfil our purposes, including any relating to research, reporting research finding or any other reporting requirements.

Your personal data will not be used in any automated way. 

If you are a patient who has attended the emergency department of the general hospital in Oxford for self-harm and you wish to opt-out of the mortality follow-up, please contact us:

By phone: 01865 613 195

By email: csr@psych.ox.ac.uk

Or, by post: Centre for Suicide Research, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Warneford Lane, Oxford, OX3 7JX.

If you are unhappy with how we have dealt with your issue on how we have handled your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office, details of which are available on their website at: https://ico.org.uk/