v5.2 - IMT Matcher retirement process

As part of many End Users' procurement, validation, ISO documentation and business continuity planning they need to understand what would be the process for retiring or decommissioning the IMT Matcher system at a site in future.

As a responsible and transparent developer of a witnessing and traceability system that helps to develop and promote best practice in the fertility industry, we understand that such a question is best answered up front and clearly, to provide you with the reassurance that we already have well developed and tested plans for such a scenario. 

The steps below detail the process that would be followed.

Contract & admin

• Termination notice to be sent in writing to IMT Matcher at [e-mail]. 
• We will email you to let you know the last day of your minimum notice period.
• Email us again when you know what will be the actual last day of usage, which might be before, at, or after the minimum notice period ends. 
• The actual 'termination effective date' will be the later of the end of the minimum notice period and the last day of usage. 

Equipment

• At the termination effective date you should uninstall any leased equipment, package it securely and ship it back to us, as it is still owned by us (but of course keep any purchased equipment as that belongs to you). 
• We will then test the received equipment and check it against our records, as if any equipment is missing or damaged then we would have to invoice you. 
• Whilst the equipment should not hold any of your data, or your patient's data, we will also check this and wipe any data from equipment hard-drives.  

Database

• For ongoing access to the data there are several options we recommend:
  • Before termination, you should export/save all required data from the system to CSV/Excel, from the date of implementation until last use, including at least the following:
    • The "Match results" workspace (having first right-clicked on one of the column titles and selected "Column chooser" to ensure all required columns are displayed);
    • The "Lots" workspace (having first right-clicked on one of the column titles and selected "Column chooser" to ensure all required columns are displayed); and
    • The "Cryo storage" report from within Settings > Cryo stores management.
  • If requested, the IMT Matcher support team can also run a 'script' against the database to export the data above to CSV/Excel. 
  • Your IT team could create a number of 'queries' to extract required data from the database, but we recommend you do not rely on this as this is difficult without a detailed understanding of how the database is constructed. 
• The IMT Matcher support team will remotely access your database and run the retirement script, which will:
  • De-activate your user logins;
  • Remove any available cycles that have not been started; and
  • End any cycles that have not already been ended by you. 
• If the database is hosted on a leased computer/server the IMT Matcher support team will also provide you with a back-up of the database for your IT team to restore to your own server. 
• We recommend you keep any back-up(s) safe for any possible future requirement. 
  • E.g. implementing IMT Matcher again in future.
  • E.g. getting your IT team to create a query to run against the database to extract certain data in future.

Data protection and confidentiality

• Even after the termination effective date any of your confidential and/or personal data held by us will remain protected by our ongoing contractual obligations and other legal obligations (e.g. UK Data Protection Legislation).

Support

• After the termination effective date no further support will be included by the IMT Matcher support team.
• Any requests you may have for further support may be quoted for in advance on a case-by-base basis. 

Un-retirement..?

• In the unfortunate event that you had to terminate use of IMT Matcher, you would immediately become a potential future customer - we always want to see our customers again and to get them benefiting from the system, whether in another fertility centre, another city, another country, or the same centre in a future year - so please do stay in touch and let us know how and where we can help you.

Please note that any emails should be sent to [e-mail]. Please also note that if you have a contract with your local distributor, rather than directly with IMT Matcher itself, then you should also notify your distributor regarding any of the steps above, and return any leased equipment to them instead of us.

Please don't hesitate to contact us with any questions or for further details.