Privacy information

Who we are

Project Sherlock is operated by Andrew Lockhart, an HCPC-registered physiotherapist. If you have a question about your information, email [email protected].

What this website is for

This website explains the service, offers a private suitability self-check, allows you to make an initial enquiry by email, and — once suitability is confirmed, an appointment is booked and you have been sent a personal upload link — provides a secure document-upload step. The public pages of this website are not a clinical record system, a secure medical intake questionnaire or an emergency contact channel.

The self-check runs only on your own device. Your answers are not saved, uploaded or sent to Project Sherlock, and they are cleared if you restart the check or reload the page.

Online booking, payment and the collection of detailed clinical information are not currently provided through the public pages of this website. The secure document-upload step is available only by personal, time-limited invitation, and only after suitability and booking have been confirmed.

Initial enquiries

If you choose to email Project Sherlock, the information you provide will be used to read your message, respond to your enquiry and consider whether further discussion is appropriate.

Please keep your first message brief. Do not send medical histories, scan reports, photographs, identification documents or other sensitive personal information by ordinary email unless a suitable, secure arrangement has first been explained.

Website analytics

Project Sherlock uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to understand how the public website is used and how well its pages perform. This can include aggregated information about page views, referring websites, approximate country, browser and device type, and website-loading performance.

Cloudflare Web Analytics is designed to operate without placing analytics cookies on your device and without creating profiles for advertising or tracking you across different websites. Cloudflare processes limited technical information to provide the analytics and security service. Project Sherlock uses the resulting aggregated statistics to improve the website, understand which information is useful and identify performance problems.

The basis for this processing is Project Sherlock’s legitimate interest in operating, securing and improving an effective public website. You can read more in Cloudflare’s privacy policy ↗.

Health and clinical information

Information about a person’s health is particularly sensitive. Before any clinical information is requested or a consultation is arranged, Project Sherlock will provide a full clinical privacy notice explaining how the information will be collected, used, protected and shared where necessary.

A secure patient pathway is being introduced for sharing relevant documents and existing reports through appropriate clinical systems. Its first stage is a secure document-upload step, available only by personal invitation after suitability and booking are confirmed. No clinical documents should be uploaded or emailed until you have received and understood that invitation.

That notice will identify the relevant data-handling responsibilities, the legal grounds for processing, the systems and service providers involved, retention arrangements and the rights available to you.

No patient-identifiable clinical information should be entered into public marketing tools, promotional avatars or ordinary website enquiries.

Document upload

The secure document-upload step lets you share up to five documents that are relevant to the problem you would like Project Sherlock to review, such as MRI, X-ray or scan reports, clinic letters, physiotherapy reports, operation or procedure letters and previous treatment summaries. Please upload only documents that relate to the problem being reviewed. You do not need to upload everything in your medical record, and you must not upload documents that belong to another person.

Documents are collected so that Andrew can consider them as part of your Sherlock Review. They form part of the Sherlock clinical workflow: after the pre-appointment questionnaire, relevant documents are considered in the Sherlock pre-review, the video consultation and the written Sherlock Opinion.

When you upload, your files are sent over an encrypted connection to a private, access-controlled cloud storage area. They are not placed on the public website, not stored in your browser, and not published at any web address. The upload step is protected by a personal, time-limited link issued only for a case whose suitability and booking have been confirmed. The upload page never asks for your name, date of birth, address or any patient or record number, and it cannot be used to attach documents to another person's record.

A member of the clinical team checks your identity against your booking before adding your documents to your clinical record in Cliniko, the approved clinical record system. Once your documents have been added, the temporary upload copies are removed, with an automatic expiry as a backstop. Documents that form part of your clinical record are handled under the full clinical privacy notice; retention arrangements for clinical records will be confirmed in that notice before appointments open.

Do not use the document-upload step for urgent or emergency medical information. Project Sherlock is not an emergency service.

If you believe a document was uploaded in error, or you want a document corrected or removed, email [email protected] and the team will check and correct the record.

Your privacy rights

You can contact Project Sherlock with questions about the personal information you have provided, including requests to access or correct information. The rights available in a particular situation depend on the information involved and the reason it is being used.

If you are concerned about how personal information has been handled, you can raise your concern with Project Sherlock or contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.