Data protection

The operator of the website www.swissintensive.ch, the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation, c/o IMK Institut für Medizin und Kommunikation AG, Münsterberg 1, 4051 Basel, CHE-192.680.561, takes protection of your personal data very seriously. We treat your personal data as confidential and handle it in accordance with the statutory provisions on data protection and this Privacy Policy.

1. Security of user data is paramount

The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation respects the privacy of all users (hereafter referred to as the “Customer” or “Customers”) of the www.swissintensive.ch website (hereafter the “Website”) and the online shop accessible via the Website. This Privacy Policy forms the basis for processing of personal data and provides an insight into the type of Customer usage data collected by the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation and the Website, how the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation uses this data, and Customers’ rights. The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation complies with the applicable data protection laws and processes personal data only for the purposes for which Customer data has been transmitted.

The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation reserves the right to adapt, supplement or amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. The latest downloadable version will apply each time the website is viewed or visited.

If there are contradictions between this Privacy Policy and the otherwise applicable contractual or commercial terms and conditions of www.swissintensive.ch, the provisions of this Privacy Policy take precedence in the area of data processing.

This Privacy Policy is geared to the requirements of the EU General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"), the Swiss Data Protection Act ("DSG") and the revised Swiss Data Protection Act ("revDSG"). Whether and the extent to which these laws are applicable depends, however, on the individual case.

2. Nature and purpose of data collected

The term “personal data” within the terms of this Privacy Policy includes information on the basis of which Customers can be identified personally. This is understood to be all information that relates to an identified or identifiable person. “Particularly sensitive personal data” is a category of personal data which is subject to particular protection from applicable data protection law. Particularly sensitive personal data includes data about ethnic origin, personal health, religious or philosophical convictions or biometric data for identification purposes. Section 2 contains information about data that we process within the scope of this Privacy Policy.

Processing of personal data is understood to be any handling of personal data, such as collection, use, storage, disclosure, transmission, or erasure of the data.

If a Customer transmits or discloses data about other people to us, such as family members, we assume that the Customer is authorised to do so, and that this data is correct. The Customer confirms this by transmitting the data via a third party. The Customer must ensure that this third party has been informed of this Privacy Policy.

Unless otherwise informed on a case-by-case basis, the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation is responsible under data protection law for the data processing described in this Privacy Policy and, on the one hand, collects personal data automatically when the Customer interacts with the website or uses the online shop. On the other, personal data which a Customer discloses him or herself (e.g. contact form, creating a user profile or customer account) is collected automatically or manually.

The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation processes various categories of data about its Customers with current and past information, as the case arises, should these change over time. The most important categories of data, which are listed in more detail below, include:

Technical data (e.g. data concerning terminal device IP address, system use protocol, in principle without inferring the Customer’s identity);
Registration data (e.g. information within the scope of a user account or registration which is required to use specific services);
Communications data (e.g. data from contact forms, e-mails, telephone conversations or other communication methods);
Master data (includes all master data required for processing contractual and other commercial relationships);
Contract data (comprises all data connected with conclusion and processing of a contract);
Behavioural and preference data (e.g. data about behaviour and preferences with regard to products and services) and
Other data (includes all data collected as part of the Customer’s use of the website and dealing with the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation).

These are stored for different lengths of time depending on the type of data. Technical data is generally stored for six months, registration data for 12 months after the end of use, communications data for 12 months after the last exchange, written correspondence, master and contractual data for at least 10 years and other data, depending on type, for three months.

2.1 Data collected automatically

Visitor statistics about which parts of the web offering the Customer visits are collected automatically when visiting the website. Every time a website is accessed, the web server automatically stores what is known as a server logfile, which contains the name of the file requested, the Customer’s IP address, the date and time of access, the browser used, operating system, volume of data transmitted and the requesting provider (access data), for example, and documents the retrieval. In this context it is sometimes necessary for cookies to be used (cf. section 4 below).

This access data mainly covers technical data and is analysed exclusively to ensure trouble-free operation of the page and to improve our offering.

2.2 Data collected during interaction with the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation for processing contracts or making contact

The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation does not automatically collect Customers’ personal data, such as names, addresses, telephone numbers or e-mail addresses.

Customers’ personal data is collected, on the other hand, if a Customer provides this voluntarily as part of a donation, or when contacting the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation (such as by contact form, e-mail or telephone). If you contact us via the contact form, by e-mail, telephone, or chat, by letter or using another communication method, we will collect the data we exchange, including your contact details and marginal communication data. If we record telephone conversations, we will specifically draw this to your attention. Obligatory fields will be labelled as such, as in these cases the data is essential in order for the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation to process the contract or handle the contact and the order or contact cannot be processed without provision thereof. Which specific data is collected can be seen from the respective entry forms. Data collected in this way mainly comprises registration data, communications data, master data and contractual data.

If a Customer decides to make a donation, the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation uses the personal data for this purpose only. The mandatory information requested when making a donation must be given in full. Specifically, the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation can use the Customer’s e-mail address to inform the Customer about important changes, such as payment problems, or technically necessary modifications. The online donation is managed by Datatrans AG. All the Customer’s payment information to be entered via the payment portal on www.swissintensive.ch, is forwarded to Datatrans AG. The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation does not have access to this payment information. The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation refers you to Datatrans AG’s privacy policy (https://www.datatrans.ch/de/datenschutzbestimmungen/) for information about data processing as part of the payment options when making an online donation.

If a Customer contacts the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation about an inheritance or a bequest, the Customer and, if the Customer and the testator are not one and the same person, the testator, must disclose certain personal data so that the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation can take possession of the inheritance or bequest in question. The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation will be governed by the testator’s instructions, especially with regard to refraining from mentioning the testator’s name where subsequent public mention of the testator is concerned.

After the contract has been fully processed or the Customer data has been erased, the Customer’s data will be restricted for further processing and erased after the retention periods under tax and commercial law have expired, unless the Customer has expressly consented to further use of the data, or the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation reserves the right to further use of the data as permitted by law. Customer data can be erased at any time and will occur after the Customer has personally informed one of the contacts listed below in writing, by electronic means, or by telephone (cf. section 9 below).

2.3 Processing purposes

The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation primarily processes the abovementioned data

to communicate with its Customers;
for contractual relations with its Customers;
for marketing purposes and to foster relations;
to improve services and develop products;
for security purpose and to control access;
to comply with laws, instructions and recommendations by authorities and internal regulations ("Compliance");
for risk and corporate management purposes and
other purposes.

3. Legal basis to collection and processing of personal data

The legal basis for collection and processing of the Customer’s personal data depends in each case on the respective data processing purpose. This may be:

Customer’s consent at the time the personal data is collected. The Customer may withdraw consent at any time. The Customer can send an appropriate message to the contact described below for this purpose. The legality of the data processing that has already occurred will not be affected by this withdrawal;
Preservation of the legitimate interests of the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation, if the Customer’s legitimate interests are not inappropriately prejudiced;
Conclusion or fulfilment of a contract;
To assert legal claims, or
Statutory regulations.

4. Use of cookies and utilisation of data

4.1 Cookies

The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation can use cookies on www.swissintensive.ch to continually improve the Customer’s browsing experience. Cookies are little packets of software information that web browsers (such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) store on the Customer’s computer hard drive to make it easier to use the website (e.g. language choice, shopping basket, etc.).

After the end of the browsing session, in other words when you have closed your browser, some of the cookies used on the website are deleted again (these are known as “session cookies”). Other cookies remain on the terminal device and help www.swissintensive.ch to recognise the Customer’s web browser again the next time the Customer visits (known as “persistent cookies”). You can check for how long the cookies are stored in the cookie settings overview in your web browser.

Most web browsers accept such cookies automatically, but web browsers can be configured so that they do not accept or store cookies. If cookies are deactivated, however, this can limit the website’s functionality. Detailed information about this can be found in the web browser’s operating instructions or Help section.

We use the following types of cookies:

Essential cookies, which are necessary for functioning of the website per se or of certain functions (session cookies), and
Performance cookies, which are used to optimise the website and corresponding offers and to better tailor them to the Customer based on the Customer’s use (mainly through third-party provider analysis tools).

The above cookies expire in 24 months.

4.2 Use of data

The data registered using cookies when accessing the website can be used for web analysis, to optimise the website and to measure performance. The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation can use third parties for this, some of whom have their own data protection regulations over which the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation has no influence.

www.swissintensive.ch uses functions from the following web analysis service:

Google Analytics
The provider of the "Google Analytics" service is Google LLC. Google Ireland Ltd. is the processor for the purposes of the GDPR and DSG (both "Google"). Google uses performance cookies (see above) to track the visitor’s behaviour on our website (duration, frequency of pages loaded, geographical origin of access, etc.) and on the basis of this prepares reports for us about use of our website. We have configured the service such that visitors’ IP addresses are abbreviated by Google in Europe before transmission to the USA and cannot, therefore, be traced back. Google provides us with reports and can therefore be regarded as our processor, but also processes data for its own purposes. Under certain circumstances Google can infer the identity of a visitor on the basis of the data collected, create personal profiles and link this data to the Google accounts of these people. You should assume that your data is being processed in this way if you consent to use of performance cookies.

You can find further information in Google’s Privacy Policy at https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=de.

Google Fonts
This website uses Google Fonts. To the best of our knowledge Google does not store any personal data in the process. For technical reasons it is necessary to transmit your IP address to Google so that the type fonts can be transferred to your browser. You can find out more about Google Fonts here https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_google_fonts_api_mean_for_the_privacy_of_my_users.

5. Newsletter

If the Customer wishes to subscribe to a newsletter offered by the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation, the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation requires an e-mail address for the Customer and other information which makes it possible to check that the Customer owns the stated e-mail address and consents to receiving the newsletter (known as the “double-opt-in” process). If the Customer has registered and wishes to subscribe to a newsletter, the Customer can consent to this when registering.

The newsletter will provide the Customer with regular recommendations and offers that might be of interest. For this purpose, www.swissintensive.ch collects and processes personal data concerning the Customer’s behaviour when using the website and how the Customer uses the newsletter (i.e. whether the Customer opens the newsletter or which Internet URLs the Customer clicks on). The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation can analyse this data for statistical purposes to better tailor the newsletter’s content to the Customer’s interests.

The personal data supplied in the newsletter subscription form is processed with the Customer’s consent, which can be withdrawn at any time in the future. Consent can be withdrawn either by clicking on the “Unsubscribe” link in the newsletter, by the Customer writing to the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation at the address given below, or by unsubscribing in their Customer account. The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation uses the personal data collected to design the newsletter content and to dispatch it. The data will not be transmitted to a third party for our own (advertising) purposes.

The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation stores the personal data recorded by the Customer in order to subscribe to the newsletter until the Customer unsubscribes from the newsletter.

6. Transmission of your data

The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation will not disclose Customers’ personal data to third parties. The exception is if the Customer has agreed to transmission of data to undertakings that are not affiliated with the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation, or if the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation is obliged to do so by statute, by the authorities, or by a court. Service providers who assist the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation with data processing, managing the website or otherwise and who are engaged to provide the products and services requested by the Customer are also excluded (for example parcel or newsletter dispatch service). These third parties will be obliged to comply with the same degree of security and data protection as the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation. All the above-mentioned recipients can, for their part, engage third parties, so your data may also be accessible to these third parties. We can restrict processing by specific third parties (such as IT providers), but not that by other third parties (such as authorities, banks, etc.).

The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation can transmit personal data to third parties that are not located in Switzerland. The Customer’s personal data can therefore be processed both in Europe and in the USA but, in exceptional cases, in any country in the world.

If a recipient is located in a country without appropriate legal data protection, we oblige the recipient contractually to comply with data protection (for this we use the European Commission’s standard contract clauses, which can be downloaded here), if the recipient is not already subject to a legally recognised regime to ensure data protection and we cannot rely on an exceptional provision. An exception can apply in the event of legal proceedings abroad, as well as in cases of overwhelming public interest, or if a contract requires such disclosure, if you have consented, or if the data concerned is data that has been made generally accessible by you, whose processing you have not refused.

It should be noted that data exchanged via the Internet is frequently directed via third-party states. Personal data can therefore also reach abroad, even if the sender and recipient are located in the same country.

7. Data security

We take appropriate security measures to preserve the confidentiality, integrity and availability of personal data, to protect it against unauthorised or illegal processing and to counteract the risk of loss, unintentional modification, unwanted disclosure or authorised access.

The technical and organisational security measures can include encryption and pseudonymisation of data, logging, access restrictions, storage of back-up copies, instructions to our employees, non-disclosure agreements and checks. We use suitable encryption mechanisms to protect transport of personal data over our website. We can, however, only secure areas which we control. We also oblige our processors to take appropriate security measures. Generally speaking, security risks cannot be completely precluded; residual risks are unavoidable.

8. Your information and cancellation rights

Of course, every Customer can notify the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation in writing – such as by e-mail – at any time that the personal data should not be used in future to make contact. Participation in the Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation’s special services, such as newsletter service, can be cancelled at any time.

There is also the option of obtaining information about data processing or to request a copy of the personal data collected via the website.

In particular customers have the following rights:

The right to request information from us about whether and which data we process;
The right to have data rectified if it is incorrect;
The right to request erasure of data;
The right to request us to issue you with specific personal data in a current electronic format, or for it to be transferred to another controller;
The right to withdraw consent if our processing is based on consent, and
The right to obtain additional information that is helpful for exercise of these rights on demand.

It should be noted that conditions, exception or restrictions apply to these rights according to applicable data protection law (on protection of third parties or commercial secrets, for example). We will inform the requesting Customer accordingly as the case arises.

9. Contact

A Customer can contact us concerning questions about this Privacy Policy, other data-protection matters and exercise of the Customer’s rights at the following address:

The Swiss Intensive Care Medicine Foundation
Office
c/o IMKInstitute for Medicine and Communication Ltd
Münsterberg 1
CH-4001 Basel
+41 61 561 53 65
dataprotection@swissintensive.ch

10. Concluding provisions

Should individual provisions or parts of this Privacy Policy prove to be void or ineffective, this will not affect the validity of the remaining Privacy Policy.

The place of jurisdiction and applicable law are governed by the Terms and Conditions.