Cookie Notice
When you visit the Canadian Institute for Health Information (“AV”) website, located at cihi.ca (the “Website”), AV and some of its authorized third-party service providers use cookies to collect anonymous, non-personal information about you. This Cookie Notice sets out how AV and third parties we authorize use cookies when you interact with our Website.
This Cookie Notice should be read in conjunction with our Website Privacy Notice, which describes how AV collects, uses and discloses personal information collected through the Website, as well as the rights Website visitors have with respect to their personal information. For more information about how AV processes your personal information, please read AV’s Personal Information Privacy Policy (PDF).
What are cookies?
Cookies are small pieces of data (text files) that are saved on your computer or mobile device when you visit a website so that information can be saved between visits, such as your login credentials or language preferences.
Cookies may be temporary (or “session”) cookies, which are only in use while you visit our Website and are deleted when you close your browser, or permanent cookies, which stay on your device’s permanent storage after you leave our Website until you delete them manually or your browser deletes them after a period of time.
Cookies that are set by us are called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies, which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting.
What kinds of cookies are used on the Website?
Our Website primarily uses the following 4 types of cookies:
Strictly necessary cookies
These cookies are necessary for the Website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually set only in response to actions taken by you that amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but that will cause some parts of the Website to not work.
| Cookie provider | Name of cookie | Function | First party or Third party |
|---|---|---|---|
| AV Custom | AVSSO | Used to identify the user’s single sign on (SSO) state based on true/false variables. | First party |
| AV Custom | AVSSOUSR | Used to identify the user for SSO. | First party |
| AV Custom | JSESSIONID | Used to identify sessions for AV applications. | First party |
| MicroStrategy | ASP.NET_SessionId | Used to identify sessions on the MicroStrategy server. | First party |
| PeopleFluent | _LMSSession | Used to identify sessions on AV’s learning management server and may be used to set preferences as well. | First party |
| PeopleFluent | LOGINCOOKIE | Used to identify/verify the user, track activity and support personalization. | First party |
| Njoyn | ASPSESSIONID | Used to identify sessions on the Njoyn server and may be used to set preferences as well. | First party |
Performance cookies
These cookies gather information about how visitors use the Website and monitor the Website’s performance. For example, performance cookies tell us which pages are popular, monitor traffic to our Website and compile anonymous analytical information. Performance cookies can also be used to identify and remedy operational problems with the Website.
We use various tools for these purposes. For instance, we use Google Analytics and Hotjar:
- Google Analytics: We use Google Analytics to learn more about the visitors to our Website and their activities on our Website. To provide this service, Google Analytics may collect certain information about you from your computer, including but not limited to information regarding your visit (such as the pages you visit and length of your visit), information about your device (such as your IP address), how you got to the Website and other information about you. You can learn more about how Google uses your data when you use our third parties’ sites or apps, including how to opt out from Google Analytics tracking you, on .
- Hotjar: We use Hotjar to help us better understand our visitors’ experience (e.g., how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what they do and don’t like), which enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. To provide this service, Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device’s IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only) and the preferred language used to display our Website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. To block Hotjar cookies, visit .
| Cookie provider | Name of cookie | Function | First party or Third party |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube | YSC | Registers a unique ID to keep statistics of what videos from YouTube the user has seen and how the video has been interacted with. | Third party |
| Qlik | X-Qlik-Session-pub | Used to maintain a connection between the AV site and the Qlik Sense server. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress | Used to detect the first page view/session of a user. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjFirstSeen | Set to identify a new user’s first session. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjIncludedInPageviewSample | Set to let Hotjar know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by our Website’s page view limit. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjIncludedInSessionSample | Set to let Hotjar know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by our Website’s daily session limit. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjid | Set when the user first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. Used to persist the Hotjar User ID, which is unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behaviour in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. | First party |
| Hotjar | hjClosedSurveyInvites | Set once a user interacts with an External Link Survey invitation modal. Used to ensure that the same invitation does not reappear if it has already been shown. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjDonePolls | Set once a user completes a survey using the On-site Survey widget. Used to ensure that the same survey does not reappear if it has already been filled in. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjMinimizedPolls | Set once a user minimizes an On-site Survey widget. Used to ensure that the widget stays minimized when the user navigates through our Website. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjShownFeedbackMessage | Set when a user minimizes or completes Incoming Feedback. This is done so that the Incoming Feedback will load as minimized immediately if the user navigates to another page where it is set to show. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjSessionTooLarge | Causes Hotjar to stop collecting data if a session becomes too large. This is determined automatically by a signal from the WebSocket server if the session size exceeds the limit. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjSessionRejected | If present, this cookie will be set to 1 for the duration of a user’s session, if Hotjar rejected the session from connecting to our WebSocket server due to server overload. This cookie is applied only in extremely rare situations to prevent severe performance issues. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjSessionResumed | Set when a session/recording is reconnected to Hotjar servers after a break in connection. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjRecordingLastActivity | Gets updated when a user performs an action that Hotjar records. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjTLDTest | Hotjar tries to store this cookie for different URL substring alternatives in order to try to determine the most generic cookie path to use instead of the page hostname. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjUserAttributesHash | User Attributes sent through the Hotjar Identify API are cached for the duration of the session in order to know when an attribute has changed and needs to be updated. | First party |
| Hotjar | _hjCachedUserAttributes | This cookie stores User Attributes that are sent through the Hotjar Identify API whenever the user is not in the sample. Collected attributes will be saved to Hotjar servers only if the user interacts with a Hotjar Feedback tool, but the cookie will be used regardless of whether a Feedback tool is present. | First party |
| Google Analytics | _ga | Used to distinguish users. | First party |
| Google Analytics | _gid | Used to distinguish users. | First party |
| Google Analytics | _gat | Used to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_<property- id>. | First party |
| Google Analytics | AMP_TOKEN | Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a non-identifiable Client ID from AMP Client ID service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. | First party |
| Google Analytics | _gac_<property-id> | Contains campaign-related information for the user. If AV has linked its Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts, Google Ads website conversion tags will read this cookie unless users are opted out. Currently AV is not active with Google Ads, but it has been in the past. AV’s Google Analytics account is linked with Google Ads. | First party |
| Google Analytics | __utma | Used to distinguish users and sessions. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and no existing __utma cookies exist. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. | First party |
| Google Analytics | __utmt | Used to throttle request rate. | First party |
| Google Analytics | __utmb | Used to determine new sessions/visits. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and no existing __utmb cookies exist. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. | First party |
| Google Analytics | __utmc | Used in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine whether the user was in a new session/visit. | First party |
| Google Analytics | __utmz | Stores the traffic source or campaign that explains how the user reached the site. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. | First party |
| Google Analytics 4 | _ga | Used to distinguish users. | First party |
| Google Analytics 4 | _gid | Used to distinguish users. | First party |
| Google Analytics 4 | _ga_<container-id> | Used to persist session state. | First party |
| Google Analytics 4 | _gac_gb_<container-id> | Contains campaign-related information. If AV has linked its Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts, Google Ads website conversion tags will read this cookie unless users opt out. | First party |
Functionality cookies
These cookies are used to recognize and remember your preferences. For example, functionality cookies may use information, such as your language preferences, to make sure that you arrive at a version of our Website that will provide you with a continuous experience.
| Cookie provider | Name of cookie | Function | First party or Third party |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube | VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | Used to measure bandwidth on pages with integrated YouTube videos and to determine whether a user is presented with the new or old player interface. | Third party |
| YouTube | PREF | Used to store information such as a user’s preferred page configuration and playback preferences like auto play, shuffle content and player size. | Third party |
| AV Custom | clientLanguage | Use to identify a user’s language preference. | First party |
| MicroStrategy | bSet | Used to store AV tool (Portal, Insight, eReporting) interface settings, such as the state of the report details section, view filter panel, accordion and other controllable objects. | First party |
| MicroStrategy | MSTR_AUTH | Set when access to MicroStrategy-based apps has been authenticated. | First party |
| AWS | AWSALBTG | Used to enable the AWS load balancer to bind a user’s session to a specific target (stickiness). | First party |
| AWS | AWSALBTGCORS | Used to enable the AWS load balancer to bind a user’s session to a specific target (stickiness). | First party |
| Njoyn | BNI_persistence | Used by our recruitment management solution to run the website functionality/content requests. | First party |
| Njoyn | has_js | Used to determine if the user’s browser has Java Script enabled. | First party |
| Njoyn | Tbtoken | Indicates a successful login on the recruitment management solution. | First party |
Third-party Website cookies
When using our Website, you may be directed to other websites for such activities as completing surveys, submitting job applications and viewing content hosted on those sites such as an embedded video or news article. These websites may use their own cookies. We do not have control over the placement of cookies by other websites you visit, even if you are directed to them from our Website.
How can I manage my cookies preferences?
You have many choices with regards to the management of cookies on your device. All major browsers allow you to block or delete cookies from your system. Please check your browser settings for more information. However, if you do decide to disable cookies you may not be able to access some areas of our Website or the Website may function incorrectly.
Contact us
If you have questions, concerns or complaints regarding this Cookie Notice, please contact us:
Chief Privacy Officer
Canadian Institute for Health Information
495 Richmond Road, Suite 600
Ottawa, Ontario K2A 4H6
Phone: 613-694-6526
Email: privacy@cihi.ca
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