If you live in the UK, the information you provide in the survey will be even more valuable if you give us permission to link your data with additional data sources including NHS, UK Public Health organisations and Homecare companies (who provide biologic/injection treatments). To do this, we need to collect your date of birth, NHS number, name and postcode. If you do not know your NHS number, we can use your name, date of birth and postcode to find it.

We will ask for your consent to collect this extra information. We will ask you to provide an electronic signature (‘e-consent’) within the online survey. If you would prefer to provide a wet signature (i.e. physically sign a piece of paper), then please download and print a copy of the consent form here, sign it and return it to us by email or post.

We will also ask you to take photos of your skin using your phone (according to our self-photography protocol) and upload the photos to our secure database. We will use the photos to assess the severity of your psoriasis. This will help us to understand how environmental changes during the pandemic are impacting on psoriasis. We will also use the photographs to develop accurate methods to assess psoriasis severity, which do not rely on face-to-face review with your healthcare team.

Your confidential information will be stored safely and protected in accordance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in our secure database. None of your confidential information will ever be made public and it will only used for the purposes of scientific and medical research in the public interest, in accordance with our ethical approval (REC ref 20/YH/0135).

It really helps us if you can provide your confidential information, but it’s not essential. You can still participate in the survey if you do not provide this information. You have the right to have your confidential information removed from the survey at any time – please contact us at psoprotect@kcl.ac.uk.