Introduction
These Terms and Conditions govern your use of the Care Opinion site (the "Website") and form an agreement between you and Care Opinion Ltd (also known as "we", "us" and "our" in these Terms and Conditions) as owner and operator of this Website.
These Terms and Conditions contain important information about our legal position, copyright matters and your responsibilities while using the Website.
We process information about you in accordance with our privacy policy. By using our Website, you consent to such processing and you confirm that all data provided by you is accurate.
Acceptance of terms
By visiting the Website and contributing to it, you agree to be legally bound by these Terms and Conditions. If you do not wish to agree to these Terms and Conditions, then please do not use the Website or make any contributions.
Modification
Care Opinion reserves the right to change any part of this agreement without notice and your use of this website will be deemed as acceptance of this agreement. We ask that you read them carefully and check back regularly as they are subject to change.
Limitation of liability
Care Opinion Limited will under no circumstances accept any liability for indirect special or consequential damages including any loss of business, revenue, profits or data in relation to your useage of this website.
Disclaimers
The information is provided on the understanding that the website is not engaged in rendering advice and should not be wholly relied upon when making any related decision.
The information contained with the Website is provided on an "as is" basis with no warranties expressed or otherwise implied relating to the accuracy, fitness for purpose, compatibility or security of any components of the Website.
We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability of this Website and cannot provide any representation that using the Website will be error free.
Use of cookies
Care Opinion uses a number of cookies to provide the services you request, and to enhance the performance and features of our site. We have provided a detailed description of the cookies we use.
Where possible we will make it clear when a service you request will result in us placing a cookie on your device.
By using Care Opinion, you agree that we can place performance cookies (which track page views) on your device. None of the cookies used by Care Opinion will harm your privacy or security.
External websites and third parties
The Website may contain hyperlinks and reference to websites operated by other parties. We do not control such websites and we take no responsibility for, and will not incur any liability in respect of, their content. Our inclusion of hyperlinks to such websites does not imply any endorsement of views, statements or information contained in such websites.
Governing law and jurisdiction
This Agreement will be governed by the laws of England & Wales and any user of the Website hereby agrees to be bound exclusively by the jurisdiction of English courts without reference to rules governing choice of laws.
Your Contributions to the Website and Our Moderation Policy
We encourage users of the Website, including yourself, to contribute freely, as long as you do so in a responsible fashion. You must be respectful of other site users, including patients, carers, healthcare staff and Care Opinion's own staff. Abusive posts or emails to Care Opinion will result in us barring you from use of this service.
To ensure you and we are protected we have developed a moderation policy that we will apply to contributions to the Website. We will do all we can to follow this moderation policy but we do not guarantee that all user contributions will be pre-moderated in line with the moderation policy. We do not control or take responsibility for your contributions to the Website.
Comments you post to the Website may be removed or edited in line with our moderation policy at our discretion, whether in breach of the standards or not, without further comment or notice to you. It is necessary for us to do this if we have believe that information posted could identify and subsequently defame an individual or a group or otherwise cause loss to a group or individual or to us.
While you own the copyright in any contributions you make to the Website, we need to ensure that we have permission to store and display your contributions to anyone who visits the Website and to provide it to healthcare providers in accordance with our mission to improve healthcare. Therefore, by posting contributions to the Website you grant us a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide and royalty-free right and license to store, copy, alter and otherwise use your contribution in any way we deem necessary in order to provide the Website and to achieve our goal of making the wisdom and insights of patients, available to the NHS.
Please note that this also means that your contributions may be used by the NHS and there may be instances when we are paid by healthcare providers for access to your contributions. This will be carried out in accordance with Care Opinion's goal to be a sustainable not-for-profit organisation
For stories shared about NHS in England:
In particular, your comments may also be used by NHS Choices, the official NHS web site (www.nhs.uk). NHS Choices has a policy of removing staff names from contributions, so if your comments are published on NHS Choices they may be edited to remove such names.
You also agree that all your contributions may be used by anyone else in accordance with the Creative Commons license linked to at the end of these Terms and Conditions.
In line with our moderation policy, we may remove any such material that you contribute to the Website.
The following is a non-exhaustive list of prohibited contributions:
- No profanity or obscenities or any kind, even disguised with asterisks.
- No personal attacks on other participants.
- Defamatory, obscene, indecent, lewd, pornographic, violent, abusive, insulting, threatening and harassing comments are not permitted.
- No impersonation of other participants or public figures. A user may choose an appropriate nickname.
- No advertising or marketing of any kind, including non-profit organisations.
- Your contributions should be your own original work and not copy anyone else's text or work. No third party copyright material should be posted.
- You may post links to third party websites but you take responsibility for those links. You may not link to any website that includes content that is prohibited above.
Care Opinion Ltd does not control any website linked to from this Website and if you choose to click on a link and visit a third party website you do so at your own risk.
You must not misuse our Website by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material which is malicious or technologically harmful. You may not gain unauthorised access to our Website or servers.
Ownership of the Website and our Intellectual Property Rights
We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our Website, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved by us and you may make use of the Website and our materials provided you adhere to these Terms and Conditions.
Your and Our Legal Responsibility and Liability
If you register with the Website you must keep your username, password or any other piece of information confidential, and you must not disclose it to anyone. We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms of use.
You are legally responsible for the content of any material you submit for posting on Care Opinion. If Care Opinion suffer any loss or damage as a result of your contributions, whether this loss arises as a result of us being subject to legal action or otherwise, you agree to indemnify us for our loss or damage. For example, if your contribution copies another person's text or damages a person's reputation and that person sues Care Opinion for copyright infringement or defamation as a result of your contribution, you will repay us any money or expenses (such as legal costs) that we are required to pay that person.
Care Opinion Ltd provide this Website on a not-for-profit basis and although we do all we can to provide you with a useful and effective service, we do not guarantee that the Website will be available at all times or that it will be free from defects at all times. We also do our best to make your contributions available to healthcare providers so that they can act upon your feedback. However, we cannot guarantee that your contributions will be seen by the relevant departments or healthcare provider in all instances. Care Opinion Ltd provide you with the Website 'as is' and without express warranties. All implied warranties are excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law. The material on the Website may be out of date, and we cannot make a commitment to update such material although we will do so where possible or where notified to us.
Commentary and other materials posted on our site are not intended to amount to advice on which reliance should be placed. We therefore disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such materials by any visitor to our site, or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents.
In the event that you suffer any loss or other type of damage as a result of your use of the Website, our liability to you is limited to £250 in total for all claims you may have against us. We need to limit our liability in this way in order to provide the service to you. This does not affect our liability for death or personal injury arising from our negligence, nor our liability for fraudulent misrepresentation or misrepresentation as to a fundamental matter, nor any other liability which cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.
Use of material on the Care Opinion site
Material on this website is made available under the following Creative Commons licence:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
You may freely use the information we publish on the Care Opinion site, so long as you do so within the terms of this license.
We encourage further use and republishing of published stories, subject to the Creative Commons license conditions, because we believe that this will create the most of value from each contribution and help build better health and care services.
This means that the published version of your story may be republished by other sites including NHS Choices and some patient organisations.
Violations and further information
To report violations of these rules or to obtain further information on them or if you have any other queries such as a request for a posting (or postings) to be taken down please send them to info@careopinion.ie, quoting the url for the posting concerned.
Care Opinion is an independent social enterprise run for the benefit of patients and staff.
Care Opinion Limited, SCEDU, 53 Mowbray St, Sheffield, S3 8EN.
Tel: 0114 281 6256
Email: info@careopinion.ie
© 2005-15 Care Opinion Limited