Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2026

1. Introduction

Home Eye Clinic ("we", "our", or "us") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our services or visit our website.

We take your privacy seriously and have implemented measures to ensure that your personal information is handled responsibly and in accordance with applicable data protection laws, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

2. Information We Collect

We may collect several types of information from and about users of our services, including:

Personal Information

Name, postal address, email address, and telephone number
Date of birth
NHS number (for NHS-funded services)
Medical history relevant to eye care
Health and medical information
Prescription information
Payment information

Usage Information

Information about your visits to our website, including traffic data and the resources that you access
IP address, browser type, and operating system
Referring websites and search terms

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect about you to:

Provide our eye care services to you
Process and manage your bookings and appointments
Communicate with you about your eye care
Process payments and maintain records
Comply with NHS and healthcare regulations
Improve our services and website
Send you promotional materials (with your consent)
Respond to your inquiries and provide customer support

4. Information Sharing and Disclosure

We may share your personal information with:

Healthcare professionals involved in your eye care
NHS authorities (for NHS-funded services)
Service providers who assist us in operating our business
Legal and regulatory authorities when required by law

We do not sell your personal information to third parties. Any third parties who process your data on our behalf are bound by data protection agreements that ensure the security of your information.

5. Website Chat and Enquiries

Our website has a "Message us" panel where you can send a booking request, leave a message, or ask a question.

Booking requests and messages. When you send a booking request or message through the panel we collect your name, phone number, postcode, who the appointment is for, your preferred time, and anything you choose to add in the notes. We use this only to contact you about your enquiry and to arrange an eye test. It is stored on our own server in the UK and is seen only by our team. These details are never sent to the automated assistant described below. We delete enquiry records after 12 months; a deleted record may remain in our server backups for up to 30 days more. If you become a patient, your clinical record is kept separately in line with our professional obligations.

The automated assistant. Questions typed into the chat are answered by an automated assistant, not a person. It always says so. It can explain our service, prices and the areas we cover, and open the booking or message form. It cannot give clinical advice, cannot decide whether you qualify for NHS funding, and cannot see or change appointments. If what you type suggests an urgent eye problem, it shows NHS 111 / A&E advice instead of answering.

To produce its answers, the text you type in the chat is sent to Anthropic, PBC, a company in the United States that provides the AI model and processes that text on our behalf under a data processing agreement. Anthropic does not use it to train its models. Anthropic may keep it for up to 30 days for safety and abuse monitoring, after which it is deleted. Because Anthropic is in the US, this is an international transfer; it is covered by the UK Addendum to the standard contractual clauses in Anthropic's data processing terms.

The assistant never asks for your name, contact details or health information, and we ask you not to type them into the chat — use the forms instead, which do not go to Anthropic. If you do type personal details into the chat, they are handled as described above.

Chat transcripts. We keep a transcript of each chat on our own server so we can check the assistant is answering correctly and safely. A transcript is stored with a scrambled (hashed) version of your IP address rather than the address itself. It does not contain your name unless you typed it — but if you send a booking request or message from inside a chat, that enquiry is linked to the chat so our team can see what you had already asked. Transcripts are deleted automatically after 30 days; the link disappears with them.

Staff alerts. When a new enquiry arrives, our team receives an alert through Telegram. The alert contains no personal data — only the type of enquiry, the first half of the postcode and a reference number.

Spam protection. Our forms are protected by Google reCAPTCHA, which collects hardware and software information from your device and sends it to Google. Its use is subject to Google's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Your browser. The panel remembers a half-finished form in your browser's session storage so you do not lose it when you change page. This is cleared when you close the tab. The chat sets no cookies.

Legal basis. We handle enquiry details because you have asked us to take steps towards providing a service (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(b)), and chat transcripts on the basis of our legitimate interest in providing and safely supervising the assistant (Article 6(1)(f)). Your rights in section 7 apply to all of it — to ask for a copy or deletion of a chat, tell us the date and approximate time you used it.

6. Data Security

We have implemented appropriate security measures to protect your personal information from accidental loss, unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. All information you provide to us is stored on secure servers. Payment transactions are encrypted using SSL technology.

While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Your Data Protection Rights

Under data protection laws, you have rights including:

Right to access - You have the right to request copies of your personal information.
Right to rectification - You have the right to request that we correct any information you believe is inaccurate or complete information you believe is incomplete.
Right to erasure - You have the right to request that we erase your personal information, under certain conditions.
Right to restrict processing - You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal information, under certain conditions.
Right to object to processing - You have the right to object to our processing of your personal information, under certain conditions.
Right to data portability - You have the right to request that we transfer the data we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.

8. Cookies

Our website uses cookies to enhance your experience. Cookies are small files that are placed on your device when you visit our website. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies.

9. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date. You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes.

10. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at:

Home Eye Clinic
Email: privacy@homeeyeclinic.co.uk
Phone: 0800 246 5965
Address: Unit 2, 41 Landor Street, Birmingham, B8 1AE