Privacy Policy Overview

The Data We Are Collecting

We collect basic information for registering you in the Buddy Badge System and following your hand hygiene performance.

  • Name
  • Email address
  • No personal health information is collected

There is no video recording. We collect data on your location, time, duration within each location and whether the hand hygiene was performed or not.

  • Time of dispenser activations of each individual
  • Location of dispenser activations of each individual
  • Time and location of each user’s presence in areas where Buddy Badge is installed and actively used.

Data access is set based on authorization from your organization

  • The majority of users (such as nurses, doctors, therapists, etc.) can view their own hand hygiene performance and the total hand hygiene performance of their Unit.
  • Authorized individuals (authorized by your organization) can view the individual hand hygiene and total hand hygiene performance of the Unit’s users, based on their access level.
  • Specially authorized individuals (authorized by your organization) can view the time and duration of the presence of each user where Buddy Badge is installed and actively used.
  • Authorized individuals can not view individual nor total hand hygiene performance data from other Units where they are not authorized for viewing.
  • Unauthorized individuals can not look up any users’ hand hygiene performance.

How we are collecting information

  • The Buddy Badge System collects data from all hand hygiene dispensers with Hygienic Echo’s technology installed, recording the time and location of each use, regardless of whether individuals are wearing a Buddy Badge.
  • When a Buddy Badge is returned to the Badge Station (Kiosk), it uploads all the collected data to privacy-protected cloud storage (Amazon Web Services).

Information that might be shared or disclosed with affiliates

  • The Buddy Badges automatically upload their data to the cloud when they are returned to the Badge Station.
  • The data is stored using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud provider. AWS does not view or tamper with the data and has completed third-party audits to validate their security and privacy practices.
  • Users can view their own hand hygiene performance and the total hand hygiene performance of their Unit on a personalized dashboard on their own mobile device or any computer.
  • Hand hygiene performance reports are available to the users themselves and authorized individuals (examples may include managers, supervisors, care management teams, etc.).
  • Specially authorized individuals (authorized by your organization) can view the time and duration of the presence of each individual where Buddy Badge is installed and actively used.
  • If there are less than three total users, total hand hygiene performance information is not displayed, since there are not enough users to reliably mask an individual’s hand hygiene performance (i.e., individual hand hygiene performance of another user may be easily revealed).
  • Unauthorized individuals can not look up a users’ hand hygiene performance.

Update Profile Information

  • Users can view their profile in the Buddy Badge Portal on their own mobile device or any computer.
  • Users can add, update, or delete their profile information themselves through the Buddy Badge Portal, or by submitting a request through the website’s Contact Us page.
  • For assistance, users can contact Hygienic Echo through the contact form on the website (Visit our Contact Us page) or by phone call: 1 (844) 8BUDDY4 or 1 (844) 828 3394.

Data Protection

  • Data is stored using Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud service provider.
  • Hygienic Echo Inc. uses data encryption at rest (while stored in AWS databases) and in transit (on the way to AWS databases).
  • We use monitoring and logging services/tools from AWS to follow activities including data access and configuration changes.
  • For website and application security, we use encryption & authentication using encryption-based internet security (SSL - security sockets layer) protocol.
  • Users have their own username and password, and access privileges determined by their organization.
  • In general, multi-factor authentication is required for managers, and optional for other users.
  • We regularly scan our system and look for bugs using a third-party vulnerability scanning tool for web application security.

Contact Tracing

  • Contact tracing may be conducted by authorized individuals in your organization during emergency situations such as an outbreak.
  • The Buddy Badge System stores contact tracing information (i.e., duration, co-location, date, etc.) only for individuals who are wearing Buddy Badges.

Updates and Notices

  • Hygienic Echo has the right to make updates to our privacy policy.
  • Clients will be notified if there are updates to the privacy policy.
  • We test for security vulnerabilities using third party software and have incident response plans in place. We can not guarantee absolute security. We will notify users in chance of a breach through email notices.

Updated: April 1st, 2023