Privacy policy

Privacy Statement

Medline Industries, LP

1. General: We are committed to treating your Personal Data with care and integrity. Privacy matters to Medline not only because we have legal and ethical obligations to treat Personal Data carefully and in accordance with laws and company policy, but because Medline understands that privacy is important to you.

2. Personal Data Collected and Purposes of Collection: Personal Data includes any information that could be used to identify you directly or indirectly, when combined with other information in Medline’s possession. We collect and process your Personal Data in a lawful manner for the legitimate business purposes listed in the chart below, under the legal basis of fulfilling our contractual obligations to you, with your consent, when needed, and consistent with our legitimate business interests, for example, to enable us to run our business successfully. These interests are described in more detail under the purposes listed below. We collect the following categories of Personal Data for the purposes listed in the chart below.

Category of Personal Data	Purposes of Collection
Name, Contact Information, and other Identifiers. Identifiers such as a name (including prefix or title), postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, internet protocol address, email address, phone number, or other similar identifiers.	We use this information for the following legitimate business purposes: providing you with products and services fulfilling our contractual obligations managing and responding to customer service inquiries managing our business relationship creating user profiles to personalize your experience improving our products and services sending marketing communications
Professional or Employment-Related Information. This includes the name of your company, your professional roles and responsibilities, job title, and business contact information.	We use this information for the following legitimate business purposes: providing you with products and services fulfilling our contractual obligations managing our business relationship creating user profiles to personalize your experience sending marketing communications providing information on educational opportunities
Internet or other electronic network activity. This includes, but not limited to, your interaction with websites, applications, and your online preferences.	We use this information for the following legitimate business purposes: providing you with products and services managing our business relationship creating user profiles to personalize your experience improving our products and services sending marketing communications
Geolocation Information. Precise geographic location information about a particular individual or device.	We use this information for the following legitimate business purposes: providing you with products and services managing our business relationship improving our products and services sending marketing communications
Audio, electronic, or visual Information. This may include pictures of your head and shoulders or voice recordings from customer service.	We use this information for the following legitimate business purposes: managing and responding to customer service inquiries managing our business relationship
Other information that you provide.You may provide other categories of information, including sensitive Personal Data, that we do not request in your communications with us.	We will limit our collection and processing of sensitive Personal Data to the extent possible. Please only provide the necessary information in your communications. Please consider limiting the sensitive personal data you provide to Medline as much as possible.

In addition to the purposes listed above, we may process any of the categories of Personal Data listed above for the following legitimate business interests to:

• Prevent fraud
• Protect information security
• Protect the rights, safety and property, of Medline, you, and/or others
• General administrative and management uses for business operations
• Comply with legal obligations and/or protect our legal interests

3. Source of Collection: We collect your Personal Data directly from you when you register as a customer, sign up for educational materials or events, or engage with us by email, phone, or survey responses. When we have not received the Personal Data from you, we might have received it from other sources such as:

• Co-branded marketing partners
• Third-party applications
• Publicly available information such as information found on social media
• Advertising networks (using cookies and other similar technologies)
• Other companies, service providers or organizations, such as data brokers and background check services

4. Transfer and Sharing of Personal Data: Medline is an international organization with affiliates across the world. The data we collect through our websites may be stored and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers, including in the U.S. and where our affiliates operate. For a complete list of companies associated with Medline, please contact us at the address, email, or phone number as stated in the “How to Contact Us” section below. Medline may need to disclose and transfer Personal Data outside of your home country where we collect it from you where necessary, proportionate, and consistent with the purpose for which it was collected. We may transfer data from all categories listed in the chart above to the following parties for the following purposes:

• for the purposes outlined above, to any entity that is or becomes part of Medline (including any affiliates of Medline);
• for the purposes outlined above, to any of Medline’s third-party service providers, including their legal advisers, credit and reference agencies, recruitment agents, information technology service providers or service providers engaged by Medline to assist with human resources or other departmental functions;
• for the prevention of fraud or other harm;
• pursuant to any applicable laws, regulations or orders issued by a court or regulatory authority, to any legal or regulatory authority or court of competent jurisdiction; or
• to any other third party that you have consented to the transfer or disclosure of your Personal Data to, and/or any other third party that you have been notified of on or before the time when the Personal Data is collected from you.

The data privacy laws in the countries we transfer your Personal Data to may not be the same as the laws in your home country. Medline implements appropriate measures to protect your Personal Data such as data transfer agreements that incorporate standard data protection clauses consistent with applicable legal requirements.

5. Confidentiality and Security of Personal Data: Your Personal Data held by us will be kept confidential in accordance with applicable Medline policies and procedures. We have put in place reasonable technical and organizational security measures that are designed to help protect your Personal Data from loss or unauthorized disclosure. Unfortunately, no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Medline limits access to your Personal Data to those employees, service providers, agents, contractors, and other third parties who have a legitimate business need, in accordance with our instructions and subject to a duty of confidentiality.

6. Personal Data Retention: Medline will only keep your Personal Data for as long as it is necessary to fulfill the above-mentioned processing purposes, or as required to comply with applicable legal requirements. After the original purpose of collection has ended, your Personal Data will be deleted or rendered anonymous, unless: (i) it is necessary to satisfy Medline’s audit requirements, (ii) to meet Medline’s legal obligations, or (iii) to fulfill other legitimate interests. We consider the following criteria to determine the appropriate retention period for your Personal Data: the nature and sensitivity of the data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure, the purposes for which we process the data, and applicable legal requirements. If Personal Data is needed for a legal claim, Medline will retain this data for as long as the issue is active and up to the time when the statute of limitation has expired.
In some circumstances, you can ask us to delete your Personal Data (see the section on “Your Rights” below).

7. Children’s Personal Data: Medline websites, applications, and other Personal Data collection points are not intended for use by children under the age of 18, and we do not knowingly collect Personal Data from anyone under the age of 18.

8. Your Rights: You may have certain rights with respect to how your data is handled. These rights vary depending on your local law and depending on Medline’s reason for processing your Personal Data. Please note that certain Personal Data or requests may be exempt pursuant to applicable laws and regulations. We will respond to your request consistent with applicable law. In your request, please make clear which rights you are exercising and what treatment or limitation you would like us to apply to your Personal Data.
For your protection, we limit the information we provide you to only to the information associated with your request, and we may need to verify your identity before processing your request. We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable. Depending on the above, you may have the right to:

• Data Access. You can ask whether we are processing and using your Personal Data, and if we are, you may be entitled to a copy of your Personal Data
• Correction. You can ask us to correct any Personal Data we have about you that is inaccurate. We want the Personal Data we hold about you to be correct and complete
• Prevention of Processing Likely to Cause Damage or Distress. You can ask us to stop or not to begin processing your Personal Data for a specific purpose, or in a specific way, if it is likely to cause unwarranted damage or distress, either to you or a third party
• Erasure. You can ask us to delete your Personal Data
• Restriction. You can ask us to restrict the processing of your Personal Data in certain circumstances
• Data Portability. You can ask us to transfer the Personal Data you have given us to another party or give it to you
• Right to Object to Sales/Processing. You can object to our processing of your Personal Data in certain circumstances
• Right to Object to Marketing. Medline will usually inform you if we intend to use your Personal Data for marketing purposes or if we intend to disclose your Personal Data to any third party for such purposes. You can prevent direct marketing from Medline by opting out to marketing on forms we use to collect your data
• If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at the address, email, or phone number in the “How to Contact Us” section below

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing, and transfer of your Personal Data for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer collect, process, or transfer your Personal Data for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

9. Cookies and Other Browser Based Collection Technologies: We collect information about your online interactions with us through tracking and data-collection technologies such as cookies, web beacons and pixels, APIs, web services, scripts, browser analysis tools, and server logs. You can choose to opt-in, opt-out or decline cookies at any time; however, if you choose to opt-out of or decline cookies, not all elements of our websites, applications and services may function as intended, so your experience may be affected. To the extent that your local laws consider the information collected by cookies and other technologies as Personal Data, we will treat that information to the standards set out in this Privacy Statement. If the retention period of a cookie or pixel is not noted, then the default is twelve (12) months, unless a shorter retention period is required by law. A “cookie” is a unique numeric code that is transferred to your computer to track your interests and preferences and to recognize you as a return visitor. A “pixel tag” (also known as a web beacon) is a transparent graphic image placed on a website, email, or advertisement that enables the monitoring of things such as user activity and site traffic, including the collection of data about the website or mobile application you were visiting before and after you came to our websites and applications. To learn more about cookies and other data-collection technologies, please visit “All About Cookies.” We classify our cookies into the following categories:

• Strictly Necessary Cookies: These cookies are required for our websites and applications to function. You cannot switch these cookies off in our systems as they are set in response to user actions such as setting privacy preferences, logging in, or filling out forms. You may set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of our websites and applications will not work if these cookies are blocked.
• Functional Cookies: These cookies enable our websites and applications to provide enhanced functionality and personalization. They may be set by us or by our service providers whose services we have added to our pages, such as our video hosting provider, recently viewed product features, and browser update notifications. If you do not allow these cookies, then these services will not function, and your experience may be impacted
• Performance Cookies: These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our websites and applications. We collect information about your computer browser type and operating system, websites you visited before and after visiting our websites, standard server log information, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, location data, mobile phone service provider, and mobile phone operating system. We use this information to understand how our visitors use our websites and mobile applications so that we can improve them, the services we offer, and our advertising. We may also share this information with other entities within Medline and our Service Providers.
  • Some of our websites use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). More information on Google Analytics can be found here. If you would like to opt-out of having your data used by Google Analytics, you can opt out here.
  • Some of our websites use Adobe Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Adobe, Inc. (“Adobe”). More information on Adobe Analytics can be found here. If you would like to opt-out of having your data used by Adobe Analytics, you can opt out here.
• Targeting Cookies: These cookies may be set on our websites and applications by our advertising service provider partners. Cookies may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and to provide remarketing services that show you relevant advertising on other sites and personalize advertisements for visitors to sites of their advertising networks (i.e., websites other than Medline’s). On these pages, you may be shown advertisements that refer to your previous interactions with Medline. To turn off personalization for advertisements served by Google click here. To turn off personalization for advertisements served by Facebook click here.

Audiences We also use Facebook custom audience tools. This allows us to provide personalized advertising to you when you use Facebook’s platforms by matching the email address we hold for you with the email address Facebook holds for you to show you the most relevant Medline advertisements. We only do this where you have given us consent.
Sometimes we may also share your email address with our advertising service provider partners to build lookalike models. This allows us to generate similar audiences of prospective customers (who may have similar interests or demographics to you) through advertising platforms like Google, based on data that the advertising platform holds about other people. If you wish to opt out of similar audiences in Google, you can do so here.

10. How to Contact Us Questions, comments, requests, or complaints regarding this Privacy Notice and/or our use of your Personal Data should be addressed to the contact information below.

Medline Industries, LP
Attn: Global Privacy Office
Three Lakes Drive
Northfield, IL 60093
Email: MedlinePrivacyOffice@Medline.com

11. Updates to This Privacy Statement We may update this statement to reflect changes in the way we process Personal Data. We will notify you about such changes in the way we use your Personal Data in compliance with applicable law.