Privacy policy

At Smile Dental Clinic, we are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This privacy policy outlines our practices regarding the collection, use, disclosure, and protection of your data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

1. Information we collect

We may collect various types of personal information from you, including:

• Contact information (such as name, address, email address, phone number)
• Date of birth
• Medical history and dental records
• Insurance details
• Payment information
• Information related to your appointments and bookings through our online booking service

2. How we use your information

We utilise your personal information for the following purposes:

• Providing dental care and treatment
• Managing appointments and scheduling, including bookings made through our online booking service
• Processing payments and insurance claims
• Communicating with you about your treatment, appointments, and bookings
• Sending reminders and updates about our services
• Conducting internal research and analysis to enhance our services

3. Disclosure of your information

Your personal information may be disclosed to third parties under the following circumstances:

• With your explicit consent
• To trusted service providers assisting us in delivering dental services (e.g., dental labs, IT support)
• To comply with legal obligations or respond to lawful requests from authorities
• In connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, where personal information may be transferred as part of the transaction

Advertising measurement

If you arrive from one of our Google adverts and accept advertising measurement on this website, we keep Google's advert click reference with your enquiry. If you later go ahead with treatment, we may tell Google Ads the value of that treatment against the click reference, so we can see which adverts are worth paying for. Only the click reference, a monetary value, the currency and a date are shared. We never share your name, contact details, enquiry message, treatment type or any health information with Google. Our legal basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time using Cookie preferences on this website or by contacting us; we will then stop sharing values for your enquiry.

Phone calls and our virtual assistant

Some calls to the practice, including calls from our Google listing, are answered by our virtual assistant, an automated receptionist. It tells you at the start of the call that you are speaking to a virtual assistant and that the call is transcribed. It can help you book, take a call-back request, or put you through to the team when we are open. We do not record the audio of calls, but we keep a written transcript so our team can follow up. The assistant only needs your name, phone number and the reason for your call, so please do not give detailed medical information. Our team will discuss that with you directly. We keep transcripts only as long as we need them to deal with your enquiry, unless the information becomes part of your dental record.

Some of our phone numbers, including those shown on our adverts, are provided through a call-handling service. These calls ring through to the practice as normal. We log the number you called from and which advert or listing it came from. If we miss your call, we may send you one text message with our booking link. We do not use your number for marketing.

We use our legal bases of arranging and providing your dental care, and our legitimate interest in answering enquiries promptly. Where you choose to tell us about your health, we process it to provide health care, under our duty of confidentiality.

Service providers and international transfers

We use trusted service providers to run our phones, booking, website and practice software. These include our telephone and text message provider (Twilio), our website and software hosting provider, an AI service that helps our virtual assistant reply, our practice management software (Dentally) and our payment provider (Stripe). They act only on our instructions under written data processing terms. Some of these providers may process information outside the UK. Where they do, we rely on safeguards recognised under UK data protection law, such as UK adequacy regulations, the UK–US data bridge or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum. Please contact us if you would like more information.

4. Data security

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard your personal information against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. Access to your information is restricted to authorised personnel only, and all staff are trained on data protection principles.

For online payments, we utilise a secure payment gateway provided by Stripe. When you make payments through our website or mobile app, your payment details are encrypted and processed securely by Stripe. We do not store your complete payment information on our servers. Instead, Stripe securely manages and processes payment transactions on our behalf.

5. Your rights

You have various rights regarding your personal information, including:

• The right to access and obtain a copy of your personal information
• The right to rectify inaccurate or incomplete information
• The right to request erasure of your personal information under certain circumstances
• The right to restrict processing of your personal information
• The right to object to processing of your personal information
• The right to data portability

6. Cookies and similar technologies

Our website may employ cookies and similar technologies to enhance your browsing experience and gather usage data. You can adjust your browser settings to decline cookies, but this may affect certain website functionalities. Please see our Cookie Policy for details of the cookies this website currently uses.

7. Changes to this privacy policy

We may periodically update this privacy policy to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. We will notify you of any significant changes and obtain your consent if necessary by law.

8. Contact information

If you have any inquiries or concerns about our privacy practices or wish to exercise your rights, please reach out to us at:

9. Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)

If you believe that your data protection rights have been infringed, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues. You can contact the ICO at:

By availing of our services, you consent to the collection and use of your personal information as described in this privacy policy.