Parallel Reality Ltd.
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Our Mission
In a world facing unprecedented challenges in healthcare, where many individuals are enduring significant hardship and pain, we recognise the limitations of current healthcare systems in providing the comprehensive care that every individual deserves. Our goal is to alleviate suffering, even if only in part, by contributing our efforts towards the promotion of good health and overall well-being.
Our mission is to leverage the capabilities of artificial intelligence to enhance human health and well-being.
Our Vision
We envision a society where preventable musculoskeletal disorders and lifestyle and diet-related physical and mental health complications are rare.
In today's fast-paced world, the demands of modern life often leave us with limited opportunities for rest and meaningful physical activity. Many health issues are avoidable or can be mitigated through lifestyle adjustments. However, due to our busy lives and lack of consistent reminders, we frequently revert to unhealthy habits, leading to irreversible health problems. We are committed to tackling these issues at their root, intervening when they are still reversible, and promoting a healthier, more sustainable way of life.
Value Statement
At the core of our mission, we are guided by a set of key values:
Affordable and Quality Care: We are unwavering in our commitment to providing accessible, high-quality patient care that is affordable for all.
Respect for All: We uphold a universal 'treat all with respect' policy, recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of every individual.
Empathy as a Motto: Empathy is not just a word for us; it's our guiding principle. We understand that patients need not only treatment but also empathy, preserving their dignity throughout their healthcare journey.
Patient-Centered Approach: Our products and services are meticulously designed with a patient-centered focus, ensuring that the needs and well-being of patients are paramount.
Adapting to Advancing Technology: In a rapidly evolving technological landscape, we stay at the forefront to provide our customers with cutting-edge health tech solutions, maintaining a world-class standard.
Passion for a Pain-Free Society: Our unwavering passion is to contribute to a society free of pain and suffering, and this passion fuels our work every day.
Pride Rooted in Humility: While we take pride in our achievements, this pride is grounded in humility. We acknowledge that even great accomplishments begin with small steps.
Timely Access to Healthcare: We firmly believe that patients should not endure pain and suffering while awaiting the care they deserve. Therefore, we develop technology solutions to grant them prompt access to healthcare."
These values underpin everything we do and drive us toward our mission of improving healthcare accessibility and patient well-being.
Focused on people and communities and guided by our core values, we aim to contribute to an improved and sustainable environment and deliver wider social benefits underpinned by high professional standards.
A responsible approach is integral to Parallel Reality. We are making progress with a wide range of initiatives, with increased awareness of our activities and further engagement with our people to help deliver on our commitments. We also take an active role within our industry, working collaboratively to realise the benefits of software technology for people, society and the economy.
It starts with our people
Taking pride in our people's dedication and expertise, we work hard to support our colleagues in making a difference. This includes our ongoing focus and investment in our employees and our culture and a commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. We strongly emphasise on work-life balance.
We look to attract bright, like-minded colleagues from all backgrounds who share our strong purpose and values, and we empower everyone to be their true selves. We work hard to ensure Parallel Reality remains a great place to work, with sustained programmes for engagement, learning, leadership and support.
Equality, diversity & inclusion
We continue to take steps to improve from virtual diversity and inclusion training to enhancing facilities and systems to ensure they are accessible and can be enjoyed by all.
We work towards a good gender balance, giving women an equal opportunity in joining our team in a wide number of roles. We fully support gender pay gap reporting, for which we aim to continue our improvement.
We’ve worked towards reducing the opportunity for unconscious bias, including anonymising CVs, ensuring job ads use gender-neutral language, and ensuring that recruitment channels and interview panels represent our candidates.
Helping our customers improve outcomes for their communities
We aim to help improve public services for the benefit of communities worldwide and create social value through technology. We also look for opportunities to support our customer’s social responsibility as part of working in partnership.
Innovation is embedded in the business and is a key part of our efforts. We continue to accelerate applying new ideas and technologies to enhance public services. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, this included rapidly conceiving and delivering new products and resources to support vulnerable people.
Considering the environment
We focus on continuous improvement, ensuring we work with customers, suppliers and partners to recognise and reduce our impact upon the environment, and we have already achieved a 98% paperless environment.
Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability
DBS Services Terms
These are Parallel Reality’s standard terms and conditions used when it supplies DBS services to its customers. They are “Parallel Reality's DBS Services Terms and Conditions”. For the Parallel Reality DBS Services Terms and Conditions click here to download.
Accessibility Statement
The content of this website has been designed to work towards AA standards of the W3C 2.0 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. We aim to make improvements to meet these guidelines continually. The design and coding of the website have been implemented to support adaptive technologies (such as screen readers and text-only browsers).
Maintaining an accessible site is an ongoing process, and we are continually working to offer a user-friendly experience. However, if you have any problems using this website, please let us know via the Contact Us page.
Gender Pay Gap
At Parallel Reality, we are committed to building an inclusive and diverse workplace which not only attracts and retains the best people but also enables
greater innovation, boosts our performance and allows us to accelerate our vision and strategy.
Brexit Statement
Under Parallel Reality’s governance framework, we consistently review risks and uncertainties and as such we monitor and assess market and legislative developments, which include Brexit.
Parallel Reality is a UK-headquartered business with operations in the UK. Our customers are in this country, and the company is not reliant on labour or product supply from within the EU. As such, the data protection implications of Brexit are relatively minor.
Parallel Reality does not rely on any amount of physical goods, however should this become necessary in the future, we will evaluate critical suppliers in order to mitigate any risk to supply continuity or cost.
We believe that the data protection implications of Brexit will have little impact on the provision of our services to customers. While data can continue to be transferred from the UK to the European Economic Area, we will engage with the small number of customers who will need to implement standard contractual clauses to support data flows. We continue to review regulatory developments and will implement any supplementary measures as the need arises.
We remain cautious while the full implications of Brexit are unclear. We are aware that the potential need to implement a significant volume of legislative change could give rise to short-term market capacity issues across the industry but we believe the company is very well placed to support customers.
We remain committed and look forward to working with customers to mitigate any risk.
Modern Slavery Statement
Introduction
This statement sets out Parallel Reality's actions to understand all potential modern slavery risks related to its business and to put in place steps that are aimed at ensuring that there is no slavery or human trafficking in its own business and its supply chains.
Parallel Reality Limited, including its associated and subsidiary companies, recognises that it has a responsibility under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to take a robust approach to slavery and human trafficking and we are absolutely committed to preventing slavery and human trafficking in our corporate activities, and to ensuring that our supply chains are free from slavery and human trafficking.
Organisational Structure and Supply Chains
We are a pioneer in software for public services, working towards providing the cloud software and digital solutions to be used by millions of people and professionals. We are headquartered in London We also have related operations in India. Our supply chains are predominantly based within the countries in which we operate.
Due to the nature of our services, our business operations are predominantly in the Software Development and Technical arena, in addition to professional services including project management, customer support, service delivery and implementation.
We are working towards providing services to a range of private and public sector organisations, such as local and national government, NHS and private hospitals, emergency services and libraries.
An annual Modern Slavery audit will be completed as part of our ongoing assurance due diligence (this complements our new supplier on-boarding process), to ensure the supply chain is compliant with risks such as product, location, country of origin and evidence of company policy monitored.
Relevant Policies
We operate the following policies that describe our approach to the identification of modern slavery risks and steps to be taken to prevent slavery and human trafficking in our operations:
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HR Policy - We promote our Modern Slavery Policy within our Team Handbook which is available to all colleagues and is provided upon commencement of employment. We have zero tolerance of any threat of physical or sexual violence, harassment or intimidation against employees and their family, or close associates. Our policies are clearly defined and communicated to all employees. All our employees are treated fairly and equally, and are paid at least the national minimum wage. Our employees won’t be forced to work in excess of the number of hours permitted in law, and normal working hours won’t exceed 48 hours per week average unless the employee agrees.
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Purchasing Policy - The organisation is committed to conducting purchasing activities in a fair, objective and transparent manner that satisfies the requirements of accountability and internal controls including but not limited to Parallel Reality’s ‘Quality Management’, ‘Environmental’, ‘Ethical Code of practice’, ‘Anti-Bribery’ and ‘Modern slavery and Human Trafficking’ policies which fulfil legal and financial obligations and effectively manages commercial risk. Emphasis is placed on selecting suppliers and service providers that demonstrate recognisable environmental, sustainable, business integrity along with Corporate Social Responsible (CSR) standards including but not limited to compliance with laws and regulations, respect for human rights, labour working conditions, equal opportunities, health and safety accreditation, maintenance and promotion of information security, fair trade and acceptable corporate ethics.
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Recruitment Policy - The organisation uses only specified, reputable employment agencies to source agency workers and always verifies the practices of any new agency it is using before accepting workers from that agency.
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Whistleblowing Policy - We encourage all of our employees, customers and other business partners to report any concerns related to the direct activities, or the supply chains of, Parallel Reality. This includes any circumstances that may give rise to an enhanced risk of slavery or human trafficking. Our whistleblowing procedure is designed to make it easy for employees to make disclosures, without fear of retaliation.
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Our values - Parallel Reality’s values of Knowledge, Integrity and Action makes clear to our employees the actions and behaviour expected of them when representing Parallel Reality. We strive to maintain the highest standards of employee conduct and ethical behaviour when operating abroad and managing our supply chain.
Due Diligence
We undertake due diligence in relation to slavery and human trafficking when considering taking on new suppliers, and review our existing suppliers on a periodic basis. Our due diligence and reviews include:
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Mapping the supply chain broadly to assess particular product or geographical risks of modern slavery and human trafficking
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Evaluating the modern slavery and human trafficking risks of each new supplier
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Conducting supplier audits or assessments which have a greater degree of focus on slavery and human trafficking where general risks are identified
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When a supplier is deemed to be higher risk by country of origin and/or lack of suitable policy/processes, an investigation is raised and assessed by senior members of the purchasing team which can result in the vendor being inactivated.
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Invoking sanctions against suppliers that fail to improve their performance in line with an action plan or seriously violate our supplier code of conduct, including the termination of the business relationship
Action taken to address Modern Slavery
Due to the nature of the supply chain, Modern Slavery risks are inherently higher in the hardware and peripheral item category, as the production process relies on factory labour.
Additional steps to manage the risk include sourcing goods from recognisable brands and reputable resellers, with evidenced processes and policies in place along with products/ suppliers that are assessed based on the country of origin. Countries and regions are assessed for risk based on the Global Slavery Index, taking into consideration the latest updates from The Department for International Trade.
Awareness-Raising Programme
The organisation has raised awareness of modern slavery issues by circulating information to employees.
The information explained to relevant employees:
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The principles of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and how it applies to Parallel Reality;
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How employers can identify and prevent slavery and human trafficking;
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What employees can do to flag up potential slavery or human trafficking issues to the relevant parties within the organisation; and
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What external help is available, for example through the Modern Slavery Helpline.
We are currently improving our colleagues' mandatory training and planning to strengthen knowledge through these activities.
Due to the nature of the business, we have not identified any high-risk Modern Slavery concerns in 2021.
This statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes Parallel Reality’s slavery and human trafficking statement.
Tax Strategy
Introduction
This document outlines Parallel Reality’s tax strategy in accordance with Schedule 19 of the Finance Act 2016 and concerns the financial year ending 30 September 2021. All references to tax and taxation concern taxes listed in paragraph 15(1) of Schedule 19, and Parallel Reality regards this publication as complying with the duty under paragraph 16(2).
Governance
Responsibility for Parallel Reality’s tax strategy lies with the Parallel Reality's financial team. The Senior Accountant is responsible for its implementation and control. Day-to-day responsibility lies with the UK Finance team.
Objectives
Our tax strategy objectives are to fully comply with all regulatory and statutory obligations, and full disclosure to HMRC as openly and transparently as possible, in accordance with our tax principles (see below).
Tax Risk Management
The UK team manages tax risks via recognition and monitoring of the various types of risk and in accordance with the Group’s tax principles. Tax risks include compliance risks, operational risks and transactional risks.
Compliance risks
Careful attention is given to ensure that all tax returns are accurate and are filed on time. To do so, our Finance and I.T teams maintain robust financial systems which are regularly subject to internal and external and audit and control processes, and we engage external compliance advisory services when required.
Operational risks
Finance teams across the organisation’s trading operations work very closely with operational teams. As a result, commercial, financial and operational decisions are taken after proper cross-functional discussion and communication.
Transactional risks
In addition to the more day-to-day compliance and operational risks faced, less routine transactional risks are faced from time to time.
Reputational risks
Full compliance with our tax objectives and tax principles helps to ensure that we maintain high standards of corporate social responsibility and enhances our reputation in the communities and markets we serve.
Tax Principles
Our over-riding tax principles are to:
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Comply with all rules, regulations and disclosures required;
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File all returns in full and on time;
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Pay all taxes due on time;
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Be co-operative, open and honest;
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Provide information with clarity and transparency;
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Conduct tax planning only in line with normal commercial objectives; and
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Never engage in aggressive and evasive tax planning.
Attitude Towards Tax Planning
We plan in accordance with legislation and our attitude towards tax planning is entirely consistent with our tax objectives and tax principles.
Level of risk in relation to UK Taxation
We do not knowingly take any tax risks. Parallel Reality’s approach to tax risk is simple; i.e. to always do our utmost to ensure compliance by filing tax returns on or before the due dates and by paying all PAYE, National Insurance, VAT and Corporation Tax on or before the due dates.
Wherever we are unsure as to any tax position or uncertainty, we engage external advice from reputable professional tax advisory and compliance companies.
Approach towards dealings with HMRC
We aim to be collaborative, honest, open, timely and transparent in all of our dealings with HMRC. We seek to liaise with HMRC to discuss any tax issues or risks arising either directly or via external advisors.
EU-US Data Privacy (Schrems II)
On July 16, 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) provided the Schrems II ruling on data transfer mechanisms for transfers of personal data to processors established in countries without adequate levels of data protection (known as “Third Countries”).
The Court concluded that the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, upon which many EU businesses had relied for their personal data transfers to the US, failed to provide sufficient protection for the data due to the surveillance powers afforded to U.S Government authorities. Consequently, those businesses must now find alternative transfer mechanisms.
Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) are the most commonly used instrument to transfer data to third countries. However, SCCs do not bind the public authorities of third countries and, on their own, may not provide sufficient assurance of privacy. Where this is the case, such as personal data transfers to the US, SCCs must now be supplemented by additional measures to protect the data.
The Schrems ruling presents a significant challenge for a very large number of UK and EEA based controllers. Parallel Reality, like many other organisations, continues to carry out detailed work with all of its partners (in particular those based in the US) to evaluate the options available to mitigate the impacts of the Schrems II decision, recognising that this regulatory scenario continues to evolve. We recognise the UK Government statement and look forward to greater guidance from the UK Government and the ICO.
The UK Government is working with the Information Commissioner’s Office and international counterparts to address the impacts of the judgment and ensure that updated guidance on international data transfers will be available as soon as possible.
SaaS Terms
These are Parallel Reality’s standard terms and conditions used when it provides SaaS Services to its customers.
The Customer’s Order Form details the SaaS Services to be provided. Once the Order Form is signed by the Customer then these terms and conditions shall govern the contract between Parallel Reality and its Customer. They are “Parallel Reality SaaS Terms and Conditions”.
Please click on the button below to download it in PDF format.
Environmental Sustainability
Introduction
At Parallel Reality, we do our part to promotes environmental sustainability, not only in the way we conduct our business but also by developing software that reduces the use of physical resources or eliminates their use altogether.
We minimise our impact on the environment and optimise the efficient and effective use of resources. We aim to achieve this by engaging all our employees in a process of continuous review of operational procedures for environmental sustainability, and by taking intelligent and well-informed decisions about changes that will make a meaningful and positive difference to our impact on the planet’s resources.
Parallel Reality is committed not only to complying with applicable law in all of its operations, but to minimising impacts through the development of policies that go beyond baseline requirements and expectations.
Purpose
This Environmental Sustainability Policy aims to integrate a philosophy of sustainable development into all of Parallel Reality’s activities and to establish and promote sound environmental practice in our operations.
Policy
As a professional provider of health tech solutions, our resource consumption through our day-to-day operations is very minimal. Nevertheless, we commit ourselves to minimising our impact on the environment through:
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An organized system of remote working;
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Fostering a culture of awareness of our environmental responsibilities;
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Conserving natural resources by reducing, reusing and recycling;
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Using, in our own operations, processes that do not adversely affect the environment;
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Ensuring the responsible use of energy throughout the organisation;
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Taking steps to improve environmental performance continually; and
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When necessary, by working with suppliers who promote sound environmental practices.
Policy in practice
Examples of our actions to date under this policy for our work-from-staff include:
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Encouraging the opening of windows in warm weather instead of the use of air-conditioning;
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The installation of drinking water filter taps to reduce drinking water packaging waste to zero;
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Encouraging the use of reusable drinks cups and bottles;
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Eliminating the use of paper, ink and other consumables by storing all of our documentation as soft copies;
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Monitoring the carbon footprint policy of our website hosting infrastructure provider (Amazon AWS);
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Favouring calls and video conferencing over travel for team and client meetings.