Postgraduate Virtual Learning Environment Terms and Conditions of Use (‘Terms’)

These terms and conditions (together with the documents expressly referred to in them) set out the terms that apply to your use (‘you’, ‘your’) of the Health Education England (‘HEE’, ‘we’, ‘our’) PGVLE. You must accept these Terms before accessing the PGVLE.

The PGVLE is a “closed” platform and can only be accessed by members of the health and care workforce following an assessment by us as to whether you may be granted an Account (as defined in paragraph 2 of these Terms) to access the Learning Hub and Content (as defined in paragraph 4 of these Terms).

Please read these Terms carefully before you access, use or upload any Content onto the PGVLE. If at any time you do not agree to these Terms, you must refrain from using the PGVLE.

Any reference to these Terms shall include the terms of our Content Policy, Privacy Notice and Cookies Policy, which also apply and shall be incorporated into these Terms.

1. Information about us and how to contact us

The PGVLE was built and developed by Health Education England West Midlands, a Non-Departmental Public Body established by the Care Act 2014. Our headquarters are based in Birmingham

You can contact us by emailing us at usman.ahmed@hee.nhs.uk.

If we have to contact you, we will do so by writing to you at the email address you provided to us when setting up your Account.

2. Your Account

In order to use the PGVLE, you will need to be granted an account (‘Account’) by HEEWM. You will be required to provide accurate and complete information, which will include name, training grade/position, registration number, email address and region. Section 7 below describes the information that we hold and how it may be processed in further detail.

We will assess the information provided by you and confirm whether you are eligible for an Account to use the PGVLE. For the avoidance of doubt, we are under no obligation to grant an Account to any person. If you have been approved by us for an Account, you will receive the details via the submitted email - please monitor your inbox/junk mail/spam folder. We recommend the use of a strong and unique password.

You are solely responsible for all activity that occurs on your Account, including any information associated with your Account and anything that happens in relation to it including (without limitation) unauthorised or wilfully malicious access granted by you to another person.

You are responsible for the security of your Account and you must promptly notify the PGVLE team if you suspect that someone has accessed your Account without permission. Your Account is non-transferable and you must not share any credentials or passwords or permit another person to complete any eLearning on your behalf or access or upload any Content on your behalf.

Should you wish to deactivate your Account at any time, please Contact Us and we will ensure that your Account is deactivated provided that there is no obligations upon you to maintain your account as a part of a training programme. This process is normally completed within five working days but may take longer.

We reserve the right to disable or limit the use of your Account at any time without notice and without giving any reason if you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these Terms or if we suspect any unauthorised use or misuse of your Account, any Content or the PGLVE generally. HEE reserves all rights not expressly granted by these Terms and conferred by general law. In the event that your Account is disabled, your right to access the  PGLVE shall (without prejudice to any of our rights and remedies) terminate immediately.

3. Using the PGVLE

The PGVLE is delivered by HEEWM. It provides a collection of online learning resources and is maintained for your use and viewing. IT also is a primary point of delivery for various postgraduate training programmes. Access to, usage of and contribution to these resources and facilities (whether directly or through a third party organisation) is granted in consideration of and is dependent on your acceptance of these Terms.

You agree to use the PGVLE only for lawful purposes, and in a manner that does not infringe the rights (including, without limitation, intellectual property rights) or restrict or inhibit the use and enjoyment of the PGVLE by any third party. Such restriction or inhibition includes, without limitation, conduct which is unlawful, or which may harass, or cause distress or inconvenience to any person, the transmission of obscene or offensive content, or disruption of the normal flow of information and dialogue within the PGVLE.

When using the PGVLE, you warrant and agree:

1. not to breach any of these Terms, any applicable law or violate the legal rights (including without limitation intellectual property rights) of any other party;
2. not to create or submit Your Content in breach of our Content Policy or attempt to circumvent any of it or the spirit of it;
3. not to use any account other than your own or permit or suffer your Account to be used by any other person or any similar or comparable act;
4. not to upload, transmit or distribute to or through the PGVLE any computer viruses, malware or any other content of any nature whatsoever designed to cause harm or nuisance to any other computer, property or person;
5. to follow any reasonable instructions given to you by us in connection with your use of the PGVLE and to comply with these Terms and all other documents expressly referred to in these Terms; and
6. subject to clause 5, not to upload any identifiable personal data relating to patients, clinicians or any other third party.

When using the PGVLE you must respect the rights and dignity of others, in order to maintain the ethos and good reputation of the NHS, the public good generally and the spirit of cooperation between those studying and working within the health and care sector. In particular, you must act in a professional manner with regard to all other users of the PGVLE at all times.

We reserve the right to monitor your use of the PGVLE from time to time in order to: (i) review your compliance with these Terms; and/or (ii) review the operation of the PGVLE and, where appropriate, make improvements.

4. Uploaded content

The PGVLE may contain a variety of content including audio files, videos, text, images, articles, links to third party resources and other materials and third party materials (‘Content’) including Content uploaded by you or through your Account (‘Your Content’). HEEWM takes no responsibility for and does not review nor expressly or implicitly endorse Your Content. By uploading Your Content to the PGVLE, you warrant and represent that you have all rights, power and authority necessary or desirable to grant the rights, use and access to Your Content in accordance with these Terms. You retain responsibility for Your Content in all respects and agree to indemnify and hold harmless and continue to indemnify and hold harmless HEEWM in all respects and in relation to all matters in respect of Your Content to the fullest extent permitted by law anywhere in the world.

When you submit Your Content to the PGVLE, unless where appropriate you have selected a specific Creative Commons licence type in respect of Your Content or any part of it, you grant HEEWM a worldwide royalty free perpetual irrevocable non-exclusive transferrable and sublicensable licence to use, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works from, distribute, perform and display Your Content and any name, words, voice, likeness and any other content whatsoever provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or developed in the future. This licence includes the right for HEEWM to make Your Content available for broadcast, publication, syndication or any other use by any third party working with HEEWM or any part of the NHS in England or worldwide, and subject to the foregoing you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution in relation to Your Content.

You agree to comply with our Content Policy at all times. We have the right to disclose your identity to any third party if you are claiming that any of Your Content uploaded to the PGVLE infringes their intellectual property rights or other legal rights. For the avoidance of doubt, HEEWM may at its sole and absolute discretion delete or remove Your Content at any time without notice and without giving a reason.

5. Third Party Content and data

The PGVLE may contain links to third party websites, facilities, products, services and other links of any kind whatsoever and wherever in the world which may be posted from time to time by other users or any other party (‘Third Party Content’). Third Party Content is not owned by HEEWM and any consequential content, products, services and any other materials are not under the influence or control of HEEWM in any respect whatsoever. Such Third Party Content is accessed and used by you strictly at your own risk and you must exercise all care and due diligence on your own behalf before proceeding to pay any attention to, rely on or take any action in connection with Third Party Content. HEEWM assumes no responsibility for such Third Party Content.

Content that discloses any third party’s confidential information, identity, personally identifiable information or personal data (including data concerning health) is not permitted, unless:

1. you have obtained their consent to the inclusion of their personal data in the PGVLE and have retained evidence of that consent;
2. you agree to at all times process their personal data in accordance with the requirements of data protection legislation;
3. you agree to promptly notify HEEWM of any data protection breach that you become aware of concerning third party personal data that you have uploaded to the Learning Hub; and/or
4. you agree to promptly notify HEEWM when a data subject in respect of any third party personal data that you have uploaded to the Learning Hub notifies you that they wish to exercise their data subject rights.

Properly anonymised data and content should be uploaded instead of personal data whenever possible.

6. Intellectual Property Rights

Save as expressly set out in these Terms, you shall not acquire in any way, any title, rights of ownership, or intellectual property rights of whatever nature in the PGVLE, its software or digital content or in any copies of it.

You acknowledge and understand that the Learning Hub and its software and digital content contains confidential and proprietary information and you shall not conceal, modify, remove, destroy or alter in any way any proprietary markings of HEEWM on or in relation to the same.

7. Information and Processing

We capture certain information on each user as part of the registration process described in section 2 above. This data enables the creation of an Account, which is necessary for accessing the PGVLE. The data that is stored is limited to information relating to users’ work, such as their job role, place of work or membership number for a professional body (e.g. General Medical Council number). We will never ask for your home address or any other domestic information.

When accessing the PGVLE, you will be asked to set up some security questions, which may contain personal information. These questions are solely intended to enable users to log in if they forget their password and will never be used for any other purpose. The answers that users submit when setting up these security questions are encrypted in the database so that no-one can view what has been entered, not even PGVLE administrators.

We also store a record of all activity relating to the upload and download of Content by all users on the PGVLE and all enquires to the PGVLE enquiry desk.

Information collected by us is solely processed to help us to facilitate the operation of the PGVLE. It will never be sold for financial gain or shared with other organisations for commercial purposes.

Examples of how we might use the data held include but are not limited to the following:

• For internal review.
• Customising the content and/or layout of the PGVLE.
• Notifying users about updates to the PGVLE.
• Gathering feedback or input on the service, content or layout of the PGVLE.
• Giving users access to their own activity on the PGVLE.
• Providing anonymous summary data to other organisations, such as professional bodies or other NHS bodies.

PGVLE administrators and other approved people working within the PGVLE have access to users’ activity records and user profiles. This may include our suppliers but such organisations will be asked to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements and will never be allowed to use the information for commercial purposes.

Under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), you have many rights regarding your personal data, including seeing what data we hold for you, your right for erasure and also withdrawing consent of data processing. Note that withdrawing consent will result in your account being anonymised and access to the Learning Hub removed.

8. Our liability to you

We do not guarantee that the PGVLE, or any Content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. We may suspend, withdraw or restrict the availability of all or part of the PGVLE for business or operational reasons, including (without limitation) for technical or security reasons. We will try to give you reasonable notice of any suspension or withdrawal but are under no obligation to do so.

We neither warrant nor guarantee that:

1. your use of the PGVLE will be uninterrupted or error-free or compatible with any third party software or equipment;
2. that defects in relation to the PGVLE, if any, will be corrected;
3. that the PGVLE and/or the information obtained by you through the Learning Hub will meet your requirements; or
4. the Content (or any part of it) on the PGVLE is complete, accurate, reliable, suitable, safe or will be made available at all times;
5. the PGVLE will be 100% secure or free from bugs or viruses. You are responsible for configuring your information technology and computer programmes in order to access the PGVLE. You should use your own virus protection software; and
6. we will not be responsible for any delays, delivery failures, or any other loss or damage resulting from the transfer of data over communications networks and facilities, including the internet, or any failure caused by third party software and you acknowledge that the Learning Hub may be subject to limitations, delays and other problems inherent in the use of such communications facilities.

We do not exclude or limit our liability for: (i) personal injury arising from negligence; (ii) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; or (iii) any other liability to the extent the same cannot be excluded or limited by applicable law.

Subject to the paragraph above, our liability to you in contract, tort (including negligence), misrepresentation (whether innocent or negligent), breach of statutory duty or otherwise arising out of or in connection with these Terms shall not extend to any: (i) loss of profits; (ii) loss of sales or business opportunity; (iii) loss of agreements or contracts; (iv) loss of or damage to goodwill or data; (v) loss of anticipated savings; (vi) loss of reputation; or (vii) loss of any special, indirect or consequential loss or damage whatsoever.

9. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless and continue to indemnify and hold harmless HEEWM, its employees, agents, partners, sub-contractors, third party software providers and collaborators anywhere in the world in all respects and in relation to all matters relating to your use (and that of any other person acting on your authority) of the PGVLE, including Your Content and any Third Party Content and/or third party intellectual property rights and (without limitation) in respect of any breach of these Terms to the fullest extent permitted by law.

10. Our Rights

HEEWM reserves the right to modify, suspend or discontinue the PGVLE at any time without notice. You agree that HEEWM will not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension or discontinuation of the PGVLE.

We may amend these Terms from time to time. Every time you wish to use the PGVLE, please check these Terms (as published on the PGVLE) to ensure you understand the Terms that apply at that time. Any change will be effective immediately upon the revised Terms being posted on the PGVLE. You must stop using the PGVLE and deactivate your Account if you do not agree to such change.

We may transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms to another organisation. You may not transfer any of your rights or obligations under these Terms to another person.

11. Entire Agreement

These Terms and the documents expressly referred to in them contains the whole agreement between the parties relating to its subject matter and supersedes any prior agreements, representations or understandings between them unless expressly incorporated by reference in these Terms.

12. Waiver and delay

No delay, act or omission by HEEWM in exercising any right or remedy will be deemed a waiver of that, or any other, right or remedy.

13. Severability

If any part of these Terms is declared unenforceable or invalid, the remainder will continue to be valid and enforceable.

14. Law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by English law and any dispute arising in relation to these Terms shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England.

15. Content Accessibility

This platform adheres to WCAG 2.1

The PGVLE is a digital platform that provides easy access to a wide range of education and training resources for the health and care workforce, and has been developed by the PGVLE team in collaboration with groups and individuals in the healthcare sphere.

Content on the PGVLE is uploaded by its user community and is not reviewed or endorsed by NHS England. If you find content or links that you think should not be on the PGVLE, or have any other feedback or concerns about the content or functionality of the PGVLE, please report it to us using the relevant links, or contact pgvle@hee.nhs.uk