Privacy Policy

Introduction

We are pleased to welcome you to the website of Swiss Medtech, the Swiss medical technology association (subsequently «Swiss Medtech», «we», «us»), and look forward to your possible registration for our newsletter. We hope that our website provides you with the information you need about Swiss medical technology and our activities.

We believe that you should always know which data we collect from you and how we use it and that you should have control over both. We would like to enable you to make the best possible decisions about the information that you share with us: that is the purpose of this privacy policy. 

If you have any questions, you can contact the data protection contact address at the end of these clauses.

Legal information

The rights, title and claims (including copyrights, brands and other intellectual property rights, and other rights) for and resulting from all information and contents (including all text, data, graphics and logos) of our services remain with us or the relevant legal owner.
Please note that the internet is a publicly accessible system. Data that you enter into the system may be lost or sent to the wrong recipients or end up in the hands of unauthorised persons.

Privacy Policy

We place great importance on your privacy and protecting your personal data. Accordingly, we are responsible for ensuring that the collection, processing and use of your personal data is lawful. We undertake to handle your data responsibly. Consequently, we consider it to be self-evident that we satisfy the legal requirements of the Swiss Data Protection Act (DPA), the Data Protection Ordinance (DPO), the Telecommunications Act and other provisions of Swiss data protection legislation.

Data processing

Contact form

If you send queries to us through the contact form, the details you enter, including the contact details you provide in the query form, are stored for the purpose of processing the query and if we have any follow-up questions. We do not forward this data without your consent.

Processing of personal data

Personal data is all information that refers to an identified or identifiable person. An affected person is a person whose personal data is being processed. Processing covers all handling of personal data, regardless of the tools and methods used, in particular the saving, dissemination, purchase, deletion, storage, modification, destruction and use of personal data. We process personal data in compliance with Swiss data protection legislation. 

Cookies

How and when do we use cookies?

Cookies help to make your visit to our website easier, more comfortable and more useful. Cookies are information files that are automatically stored by your web browser on the hard drive of your device when you visit our website. Most of the cookies used by us are «session cookies». These cookies are automatically deleted at the end of your visit. Other cookies are stored on your device until they are actively deleted. The latter cookies enable your device to be recognised the next time you visit our website. We use cookies, for example, to temporarily store your details when you fill out a form on the website so that you do not have to enter the information again when you access a different subpage or to show you a personal website view. 

Most internet browsers automatically accept cookies. However, you can configure your browser so that no cookies are saved on your computer or a message is always shown when you receive a new cookie. Deactivating cookies may mean that you cannot use all the functions of our websites.

Using tools from third-party providers

Mailchimp (emailing newsletters)

We send newsletters, emails and other electronic notifications with promotional information (subsequently «mailing»). To send our mailings, we use the email marketing services of Mailchimp (The Rocket Science Group, LLC, 675 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Suite 5000, Atlanta, GA 30308, United States). The mailing data is stored on both the hosting server of the website and on a Mailchimp server in the United States.

For each mailing sent, there is information about the address file used, the subject and the number of mailings sent. It can also be seen which addresses have not received the mailing, to which address the mailing was sent to and for which addresses the sending of the mailing failed. The opening rate, including the information about which addresses opened the mailing and which addresses have unsubscribed from the newsletter, can also be determined. Data can also be collected about the click behaviour within an automatically sent newsletter mailing. 

We use this data for statistical purposes and to optimise the contents and structure of future mailings. This enables us to better target the information and offers in our mailings to your specific interests. The tracking pixel is deleted when you delete the newsletter. The law specifically allows the processing of personal data as part of our legitimate interests. Our legitimate interests consist of direct marketing and analysis of the use of the mailings. You can withdraw your consent to the data processing at any time if there are reasons that in your specific situation argue against the data processing.

More information about the collection and use of your data by Mailchimp is available in their data protection statement: https://mailchimp.com/legal/ 

Google Analytics

For the appropriate design and ongoing optimisation of our websites, we use the web analytics service of Google Analytics. In this context pseudonymised user profiles are created and cookies are used. The information generated by the cookie about how you use this website is sent to the server of the service provider, stored there and processed for us. Under some circumstances, we use this to process the following information:

• navigation path that a visitor travels to the website
• how long the visitor remains on the website or subpage
• the subpage where the visitor left the website 
• from which country, region or city the visitor accessed the website 
• device (type, version, colour depth, resolution, width and height of the browser window)
• recurring or new visitor 

The information is used to analyse the use of the website, to compile reports about the website activities and to provide additional services connected with the website and internet use for the purposes of market research and appropriate design of the website. 

The provider of Google Analytics is Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States («Google»). Prior to sending data to the provider, the IP address is truncated by activating IP anonymisation («anonymizeIP») on this website within the Member States of the European Union or in other states that are signatories to the Convention on the European Economic Area. The anonymised IP address sent by your browser as part of Google Analytics is not combined with other data from Google. Only in exceptional cases is the full IP address sent to a Google server in the United States and truncated there. In these cases, we use contractual guarantees to ensure that Google satisfies an adequate level of data protection. According to Google, in no case is the IP address connected to other data related to the user. 

You can find more information about the web analytics service used on the Google website: https://policies.google.com/privacy 

Instructions for how you can prevent the processing of your data by the web analytics service is available here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout 

Google Tag Manager

On our websites we use Google Tag Manager from Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland («Google»). Google Tag Manager is a solution that enables marketers to manage website tags from a web interface. The Tag Manager tool is a cookieless domain and does not collect any personal data according to Google. The tool activates other tags that may collect personal data. Google Tag Manager does not access this data according to Google. If deactivation has been carried out at the domain or cookie level, this remains in effect for all tracking tags that have been implemented with Google Tag Manager. You can prevent tags being placed at any time.

More information about the collection and use of your data by Google Tag Manager from Google is available in their data protection statement: https://marketingplatform.google.com 

Google Maps

We use Google Maps API (application programming interface, «Google Maps»; Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland) to visually display geographic information (maps). By using Google Maps, information about the use of our internet page, including your IP address, is sent to a Google server in the United States and stored there. 

There is the option of deactivating the Google Maps service and preventing data transfer to Google if you deactivate the JavaScript in your browser. However, we point out that this means that you will not be able to use the map display. 

More information about the collection and use of your data by Google and your rights regarding this is available in their data protection statement: https://policies.google.com/privacy and in the additional terms of use for Google Maps or Google Earth at https://www.google.com/intl/de_de/help/terms_maps/

YouTube

On our websites we use the plugin of the video sharing website YouTube (YouTube LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, United States). YouTube is a subsidiary of Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. We use this plugin to improve the user experience by means of videos.

Each time a page is accessed that offers one or more YouTube video clips, a direct connection is made between your browser and a YouTube server in the United States. Information about your visit and your IP address are stored in the process. By interacting with the YouTube plugin (e.g. by clicking the start button), this information is also sent to YouTube and stored by YouTube. If you have a YouTube user account and do not want YouTube to collect data about you through this website and link this data to your account data stored by YouTube, you must log out of YouTube before you visit this website. 

YouTube also accesses the Google Analytics tool via an iframe in which the video is embedded. This is separate tracking by YouTube to which we have no access. You can stop the tracking by Google Analytics by using the deactivation tool that Google offers for some internet browsers.

More information about the collection and use of your data by YouTube is available in the data protection statement from YouTube or Google: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Drupal

To manage the contents of our online offers, we use the open-source CMS solution from Drupal (Drupal Association, 3439 NE Sandy Blvd 269, Portland, OR 97232, United States).

Drupal allows us to build user profiles for personalisation by initially using the email address, name or other information that you have submitted to our website. The tool can also track your user activity using the analytics function. This data can also be compared to your publicly accessible information (such as profiles in social media) and used to build a personal profile that we can view and use to improve our website or to provide you with more relevant information. By default we do not use the automated social matching function. 

More information about the collection and use of your data by Drupal is available in their data protection statement: https://www.drupal.org/privacy 

Handling your data

With SSL/TLS encryption

This website uses SSL/TLS encryption for security reasons and to protect the transmission of confidential information such as queries that you send to us as the website operator. You can identify an encrypted connection in that the address bar of your browser changes from «http://» to «https://» and a lock symbol appears in the address bar.

When the SSL or TLS encryption is activated, the data that you transmit to use cannot be read by third parties.

Server log files

The provider of this website automatically collects and stores information in server log files that your browser automatically sends to us. 
 
This data includes:

• browser type and version
• operating system used
• referrer URL
• host name of the accessing computer
• time of server request

This data cannot be linked to specific people. This data is not merged with other data sources. We reserve the right to subsequently check this data if we have concrete reasons to suspect unlawful use.

Your rights

You can withdraw your consent at any time to data processing, particularly data handling related to direct marketing (e.g. against promotional mailings). You also have the following rights:

Right to be informed

You have the right to request access to your personal data that we store, if we process it, at any time and free of charge. You thus have the opportunity to check which of your personal data we process and that we use this data in accordance with the applicable data protection provisions. 

Right to rectification

You have the right to rectify incorrect or incomplete personal data and to be informed about the rectification. In this case we inform the recipients of the affected data about the changes made, provided that this is not impossible or associated with disproportionate effort.

Right to erasure 

You have the right to have your personal data deleted in certain circumstances. In isolated cases the right to erasure may be excepted.

Right to restriction of processing

In certain circumstances, you have the right to request that the processing of your personal data is restricted.

Right to data portability

In certain circumstances, you have the right to obtain the personal data that you have provided to us free of charge and in a readable format.

Right to object

You have the right to submit to a relevant supervisory authority an objection to the manner and means of processing of your personal data. The responsible data protection authority in Switzerland is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (http://edoeb.admin.ch). Our data collection is officially registered with the FDPIC.

Right to withdraw consent

You have in principle the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Previous processing activities based on your consent do not become unlawful as a result of you withdrawing your consent.

Exercising the rights named above requires as a rule that you clearly prove your identity (for example, in those cases in which your identity otherwise is not clear or can be verified; with a copy of your personal identification). To exercise your rights, you can contact us at the address below.

Contact us 

Swiss Medtech is responsible for the data processing. If you have concerns relating to data protection, you can send your request to us by mail at the following contact address: Swiss Medtech, Data Protection, Freiburgstrasse 3, Bern 3010, Switzerland or by email to communication@swiss-medtech.ch.

Date: August 2023