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Using customer data – Other countries, other laws

When you visit any website, you leave a digital fingerprint. Data such as IP address, geographic location, gender, interests and websites visited are collected and analyzed to create a profile. All this to generate a customer experience. This includes attention, discovery, care, advice, purchase and service. And from this, it is hoped to generate a loyal repeat customer.

Cloud technologies make it easier to monitor customers. This includes website tracking, automation, personalization and Big Data. Search histories are combed through, status updates on social media are analyzed, as are articles read online and shopping on the Internet. Based on this, profiles are created on individuals or homogeneous groups to influence behavior online. This practice is implemented by almost all companies. The big players, which cover many areas of our lives, manage to do extensive and good profiling.

The biggest data octopuses are known to us all. Facebook and Google process huge amounts of data, which is used for personalized advertising. The more specific the data, the more the companies are willing to pay for it. The market for personal data is worth several billion CHF.

Article 13 of the Swiss Federal Constitution fundamentally states that every person has the right to respect for their private and family life, their home, and their correspondence, post and telecommunications, as well as to protection against misuse of their personal data.

Parliament revised the Swiss Data Protection Act (DPA), formerly adopted in 1993, and approved it on September 25, 2020. As a result, it aligns with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and no longer requires individual contracts with service providers in other European countries to exchange data.

Since the GDPR better protects the rights of private individuals on the one hand, but also punishes companies more severely if they fail to comply with the law, some companies are forced to relocate their headquarters to a country where data protection regulations are not subject to strict requirements. This means that sensitive customer data can continue to be collected.

Data octopuses – where do the traps lurk?

Messengers

Recently, there was a real exodus of users from WhatsApp. Data provided by the users themselves are stored. That would be, for example, display name, birthday, phone number, status and profile picture. The data is supposedly not stored on servers. But as soon as someone uploads their backup to the cloud, the data becomes vulnerable. The content is encrypted end-to-end, but WhatsApp is able to filter metadata, such as location, recipient’s phone number, device numbers, time when a message was sent or time of the phone call. This is also enough to see who is in contact with whom and how often. It is hard to get rid of WhatsApp, especially when almost the entire circle of acquaintances continues to use this messenger. Nevertheless, WhatsApp is still the most popular and widely used messenger.

Since Facebook bought WhatsApp, Facebook has been able to fill in the missing data of WhatsApp’s profiling (metadata collection) by means of data exchange, as Whatsapp’s new T&Cs allow this.

It was said that Facebook uses the metadata to track down problematic users. If, for example, a newly opened account quickly sends a high number of chats, this could be an indication of a spammer.

Unencrypted and thus traceable metadata is still this:

• Names and profile pictures of WhatsApp groups
• phone numbers
• profile photos
• status messages
• Battery level, ID, operating system, languages, time zone and IP address of the phone,
• strength of the radio signal
• all linked Facebook and Instagram accounts
• time of the last used app
• all past violations

Mobile apps

When installing various apps on your phone, it sometimes happens that you carelessly click on “install” without checking what you are giving the app access to. Does a photo app really need access to the phonebook? Does a note app need access to SMS? And why does a painting app for kids need access to the microphone, phonebook and camera function?

In January 2020, some media portals reported how certain cycle apps (over 40% of all apps tested) sold women’s most intimate data to Facebook. Even women who did not have a Facebook account were affected. Just imagine what Facebook and Co. could do with data such as frequency of sex, pregnancy wish, contraceptive methods, mood, alcohol consumption, etc. What if women were already seeing ads for diapers on Facebook, and Facebook could use algorithms to predict a pregnancy at an early stage?

Traps lurk everywhere. We are sometimes too careless with our personal data.

Who benefits from the data?

If you want to catch a glimpse of the tangled world of data exchange, we recommend an app check: https://appcheck.mobilsicher.de/.

Based on various scores (points), privacy is checked and points are assigned per app. 1 = no risk, 5 = very problematic.

The data that various apps share with marketing companies (most of them based in the US) is used for purposes such as measuring success, maximizing profits, user tracking and linking, IP address location and target group analysis. What used to be gold is now personal data. Nowhere else can more money be made. If the Internet knows what I like, where I am and when I’m awake, advertising can be targeted and personalized. And what people often search for, they will eventually buy. The data octopuses know this, too.

When a dating app shares data with Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and Yahoo, you have to wonder if you really want nearly the entire Internet to know about your preferences, relationship status, and contacts (thanks to aggressive tracking). What is true for apps is usually also true for various Internet accounts.

Artificial intelligence is able to extract new insights from big data in the cloud. Today, algorithms trained with machine learning are able to quickly identify seemingly hidden relationships in a lot of unstructured data, providing new insights for decision making.

And who benefits from your data???

Sources:

https://www.superoffice.ch/

www.admin.ch

www.techbook.de

www.srf.ch

https://appcheck.mobilsicher.de/

https://www.werbewoche.ch/

www.t3n.de

And this is where the electronic patient dossier (EPD) comes into play.

There is still no electronic patient file in Switzerland in which all the information flows together in a structured way. And if patient files are available digitally, they exist in different formats on different systems. This poses a major problem for the interoperability of data.

At the beginning of the Corona pandemic, it became clear that Switzerland had difficulties keeping track of infections. Some cantons reported new cases manually and by fax instead of using digital channels.

Standardised exchange possibilities for digital medical records are needed. A digital patient dossier enables personalised healthcare that takes into account, for example, a patient’s individual genetic predispositions. More precise diagnosis and treatment would be possible.

Both healthy and sick people are reluctant to entrust their data to commercial or government organisations. Could the supplementary insurance company exploit a predisposition to illness to increase the policy? Are people considered to be ill if they only have a predisposition, without the disease having even broken out? It is not yet possible to estimate the direction in which everything will develop in the future. It is important that citizens are informed about who uses their data and for what.

Switzerland’s big advantage is that patients trust research institutions and hospitals. The challenge is to keep that trust. Everyone must take an active interest in what happens with their own data.

Tailor-made medicine for everyone has a price, namely patient data.

Research and artificial intelligence (AI) are two other important points to consider with regard to medical data. Researchers have high hopes for artificial intelligence, which could help doctors by diagnosing various diseases. Everyone has a unique DNA, which not only provides information about external characteristics and origins, but also shows the probability of contracting various diseases, e.g. cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, etc. The promise of medicine: the more data we have, the more diseases we can diagnose.

The promise of medicine: the more data available about someone, the better the diagnoses and the more targeted the therapies. Many diseases could be detected in advance and perhaps prevented.

For science, the large amount of health data is paradise: if it is analysed and linked by many millions of people, medical research can make undreamt-of progress. Standardised one-size-fits-all therapies work, but not equally well for everyone. And for some patients, not at all.

Personalised medicine uses the large amounts of health data to develop therapies tailored to individual patients. It is important to base research and clinical decisions on real health data. Only in this way can personalised medicine work, taking into account individual patient characteristics.

But AI needs to be fed with data in order to learn. In this context, a central system for patient data would be essential and the health data would have to be available to medical research and society. If patient information were stored centrally, it would be possible to find out very quickly who needed special treatment in the case of new findings on a certain disease.

It is important, however, that personal data such as name, address, contact details, etc. as well as metadata remain protected to prevent misuse.

Data or not, AI remains a pipe dream for the time being. Switzerland is failing in the task of bringing together and standardising clinical data between different healthcare providers and facilities.

But what about data protection and our laws?

The Swiss health system is based on a federal structure in which the federal government, cantons and municipalities have different competences. Health care costs are not covered by the state, but by private health insurance companies (with the exception of accident insurance). The inconsistent system makes it complicated to exchange information between clinics, practices and hospitals, and even within the canton. There is a lack of binding interoperability standards.

The different cantonal health systems as well as Swiss legislation make it difficult to use the data. The federal law on the electronic patient file, which came into force on 15 April 2017, aims to improve the exchange of data within the healthcare system. Secondary use of the data, for example for research purposes, is not provided for, even with the patient’s consent.

Almost all over Europe, access to health data is very difficult for research and industry. In many European countries, health data is not centrally managed. Data formats are often incompatible. Strict data protection laws prevent their use without the explicit consent of the patients themselves.

European role models are Nordic countries like Denmark. It has an excellent electronic medical record, which is also used for research. Estonia has also set up a modern system for e-government and electronic patient dossier in recent years, the basis of which is the nationwide eID for residents. In Finland, all patient data has been centrally managed for years and used in various projects.

A new legal framework is needed where people can securely store, merge and control access to their diverse data from smartphones, patient records, shopping data and genome data. The principles of “Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI)” and “privacy by design” should be applied.

Physicians learn extremely sensitive and intimate information about their patients on a daily basis. Therefore, their responsibility with regard to data protection and data security is correspondingly high. This data belongs to the category of “personal data requiring special protection” and is accordingly strongly protected by the Swiss Data Protection Act. Additional requirements may arise from the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which took effect on 25 May 2018.

Sources:

• Bag.admin.ch
• Swissinfo.ch
• datenundgesundheit.ch
• Ethz.ch
• Srf.ch
• Bertelsmann Foundation

At school I learned that you can do many things with a Raspberry Pi and had decided to buy one. The only problem was that I had no experience with Linux-based operating systems and therefore couldn’t do much with my Raspberry Pi.

When I had to prepare a project for the new trainee who would be coming to the office for 2 weeks, I had the idea of programming a chatroom with him. When I was thinking about where we could host it, I came up with the idea of using a Raspberry Pi. But since I didn’t know how to host anything on it, it was a great opportunity to learn how to use it.

It was great to learn how to use the Raspberry PI. In Fluance, I was able to get help from software developers who had more experience using this device. This helped me a lot because I learn best face to face when someone explains something to me and I can ask questions directly.

The learning experience was exhilarating and I was really happy that everything worked out in the end. I’m using my Raspberry PI as a web server at the moment. It’s brilliant to have such a device. Because when I have an idea to program something, I have a place where I can host, try out and test my creative ideas.

I think a Raspberry PI is something brilliant and a perfect project for apprentices. There are many different ways it can be used and all of them are good learning experiences.

As a developer in general, I think that Azure provides the services and infrastructure necessary to create any type of software project: from small to very very large; from simple to very complex. And the options go from ready-to-use with minimal configuration to fully customizable. 

Azure supports open standards, like Docker and Kubernetes, directly or under the hood, and this makes it easier to switch from one Cloud platform to another. They all provide a large set of varied technologies supported by a very dynamic (virtual) infrastructure, from simple and small to very sophisticated and very large. Today companies from small (eg an online shop, a startup) to the very large (eg Netflix), use and rely on a Cloud-based solution to provide their services worldwide. And so I think that today any software developer or engineer should have this skill under their belt because a Cloud platform like Azure is what supports how the digital world works today.

By using Azure:

• it enables access and management of all the resources of a project and it’s different deployed environments from anywhere.
• it’s easy and fast to create and delete any type of new (virtual) resources, and test new types of solutions

We have different environments to deploy our applications, and each environment has some different requirements in how it should be deployed. For example, our Integration environment should be automatically built and deployed whenever there is a new commit. On the other hand, our Staging environment should get a new deployment only when there is a new release to deploy. And our Production environment should have deployed only releases that passed QA in Staging. We have implemented those processes in Azure for Frontend, and it makes creating a new release much quicker and simpler once we have all the pieces in place and working together.

The best example is our Integration environment, where we test together all the different parts of the application. As a Frontend developer, all you need to do to add a change to this environment is to commit that change in a specific Git branch and push it to the server. That will trigger Azure to automatically re-build and re-deploy the application with that new change included. This automation is a great value, and very simple for the developer. 

Another example is with our Staging environment, which is more controlled and should be less automatic. There, we manually “promote” a set of changes to a new release, commit those changes to a different branch which is specific for new releases, and then we can manually trigger in Azure the processes/steps to create and deploy this new release candidate.  

And again, once we have created and tested those processes/steps in Azure, afterwards it becomes very simple to run them again and again. And from anywhere; at the office or at home.

There is some time involved in learning how to start using and managing a Cloud platform, it’s a continuous learning process because of the amount of different types of available and new services, but I think the investment is well worth it.

We asked our partners from inpeek in Valencia (ES) 7 questions.

How does your average working day looks like?

Manuel: I usually wake up at 07:30, then I have breakfast and then I go to work. I start working at 8:30 until I join the daily meeting at 09:30. Then, I resume working and I have something to eat at approximately at 10:30. I take an hour break at 14:00 to have lunch, until 15:00 when I join the catch-up meeting. And then I resume working again until 17:30. During these days of lockdown I try to do some activities like running or going out for a walk in my spare time.

Alex: My working day always starts with a big coffee and commuting to the office usually. Later every day is different. There aren’t two days equal!

Juan: I like to have a routine. The first thing is to greet colleagues and have a coffee. Then I organize my day and try to stick to the goals I have set myself. I find the „Pomodoro Methodology“* very useful.

Mario: It starts early in the morning reading and answering emails over a good cup of coffee, then comes the follow-up meetings and from there the concentration time, where I can make the most progress on my tasks.

Simón: It always seems very different since the tasks I have to complete are not the same. The good part ist hat I always learn new things.

* Wikipedia: The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. The system uses a short-time alarm clock to divide work into 25-minute sections – called pomodori – and break times.

How often do you work from home?

Juan: Unless circumstances require it, I prefer to work in the office. At home, I sometimes don’t have the same level of concentration as I do in the office.

Manuel: Due to the pandemic, I work from home most of the days in the week now. But I usually go to the office on days when I have no language classes. These weeks we have three language classes per week, so I theoretically should be twice a week in the office for work.

Alex: My first time working from home was during the lockdown. Now I know that I can work from home without problem and I’ll try to do it once a week, when the situation becomes normal.

Simón: Now I’m working everyday at home because oft he situation. Maybe soon we could gather together once we get the vaccine…

Mario: Due to the current situation I work from home 100%, although I think 60% office and 40% home would be the best combination.

What are the biggest challenges for you?

Mario: In this profession the main challenge is the time for continuous training, the market changes very quickly and you run the risk of being left out if you don’t make an effort.

Simón: My biggest challenge nowadays is to improve as a web developer and learn how to use the tools I need in order to become a better professional.

Juan: Continuing to improve my job skills. Team management and knowledge of technologies are always in my focus.

Manuel: A big challenge for me could be any task in my daily work that may require a kind of knowledge that I need to get. This is hard, especially in situations when I can’t get it from my teammates and when it’s difficult to find on the internet. In my opinion, learning something new is always a challenging issue.

Alex: I would say, regarding the work, the challenge is to maintain the contact and the good feeling between the team due to the distance. Other challenge is to keep myself updated in the newest cloud computing technologies

What kind of work do you like the most?

Alex: Well, the architectural work is the one I like the most. I feel so comfortable coding.

Juan: Applying acquired knowledge. Learning is something that excites me but being able to create things with that study is a great personal and job satisfaction.

Simón: Normally I like to fix bugs and create new parts of the web. Maybe in future I will have new favorite things to do as I learn new things!

Manuel: I have tried many jobs before starting to study my degree in computing. Messing around with the computer is something that I liked to do since I was a child. Now I work as a developer, I am a lucky person because I can do what I liked since my childhood. My degree was more focused on system’s administration, but I do not have any preference in the kind of tasks, if it’s related to computing.

Mario: Team and project management, although I still enjoy pure development tasks, especially the complicated ones.

What’s the programming language you like the most? Why?

Simón: Now that I’m working with angular and typescript I suppose that could be my favorite way to program, for now…

Mario: If I have to choose one, it would be Java, as it is the one I have used the most throughout my career, and the one that has given me the opportunity to grow as a professional.

Juan: I have two choices: Java and Python. Java is a language that has been modernised whenever necessary and I like to create things with it. It has almost everything and what it does not have, you can create yourself. Python is a mathematical language. Easy to understand for those of us who love to solve problems.

Manuel: Java is the first programming language that I started to learn when I was studying my degree, and it was used in many subjects that I had there. So, this is maybe the one that I know the best, so I would choose Java for this reason.

Alex: Simple answer for me: Java. The most important reason is that I have been working with this language for more than 15 years. But even though it’s a time-honored language, new technologies based on it are still popping up.

Do you have a dream which you are pursuing? Tell us more!

Alex: Related to my profession, I can call myself a good architect-consultant. Concerning my personal live, to see my daughter grow up.

Manuel: I am not a dreamer in person, I just try to make a living doing what I love to do. So, I don’t have any special dream, I only wish I could take advantage of good opportunities that may arise in my life.

Juan: I hope I can continue to enjoy the pleasure I get from reading. A dream? To have my own house for my family and myself. And to return as soon as possible to visit the Asturian mountains.

Mario: I have a personal project related to cars that involves manual work, mechanical and electrical knowledge and programming skills, maybe one day I will have the time to get it going and see if I am able to put all the pieces together.

Simón: My dream is to be rich! I wish I could complete my dream soon…

What do you think about Europeans which have meal at 12 o’clock?

Mario: I think they are crazy, hehe. Now without joking, it’s very difficult for people in Spain to change their eating habits. We are not big breakfast eaters, so we eat something in the middle of the morning (10:30-11h) and this means that we are not hungry until at least 14h. I remember trying to adapt to the meal schedule on my first trip to Switzerland and at 16 o’clock I had to go down to the supermarket to buy something because I was starving and couldn’t concentrate.

Alex: Which time will they have dinner? Do they have something before it? I ask myself this questions because my common dinner time is as late as that of other Europeans. In my opinion eating at 13:00 o’clock would be acceptable for me.

Manuel: In my opinion it has more to do with the quantity of sunny hours per day. In general, southern European countries have lunch later than the northern ones. That is simply physical science.

Simón: I think they are very hungry, I couldn’t have the lunch at that time, I’ve just had the breakfast!

Juan: Before I travelled for the first time outside Spain it seemed strange to me. But by visiting countries like Sweden, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria or Switzerland, I have learned to understand the rhythm of life in the Europe that doesn’t touch the Mediterranean. Eating at 12 o’clock is now something logical for me there.

Thank you guys for this nice interview!

How would you describe MS Azure Cloud? What is it for?

Microsoft Azure Cloud (Azure) is a technical solution to move the entire deployment and release infrastructure to an external service. In other words, all the servers that we might have in our offices for databases, applications, etc. are available on Microsoft servers that are managed and maintained by Microsoft staff.

This means that we can work from anywhere with an internet connection and delegate the work of maintaining that infrastructure to an external service. At the same time, the availability of all our services is guaranteed practically 24/7.

How do you proceed by setting up Azure?

Azure is like a shop window where you are offered almost all the services you may need to support and deploy a project in the best conditions. A solid and well-connected structure. We could say that, in essence, Azure is not configured, but rather we are offered products that we already know with a simplified interface, and these are what is really configured. This allows us to save time and dedicate it to the customer’s needs.

Are there some difficulties or peculiarities you have to keep in mind?

Azure is a huge platform. It has a lot of resources and you must be careful about which ones you choose and how you work with them.

In our work environment, it is not efficient to know every single aspect of Azure, but it is efficient  (and mandatory) to know how to configure and work correctly with the tools we need. Another important part, derived from this knowledge, is the optimization of the resources we are using to achieve real savings compared to having the same resource structure on our own servers and avoid surprises in our bills.

What are the biggest challenges?

The learning curve is initially difficult. The biggest challenge is to know how to take the most out of what it offers us, to take advantage of the real benefits of Cloud Computing. No tool is efficient if it is not used correctly.

Getting the most efficient environment possible, to be able to run our projects and facilitate the work of all our colleagues is perhaps the biggest challenge that Azure offers us, as well as other cloud development platforms such as Amazon or Google.

What is the best thing on Azure?

The acceptance it has had in the software community. The vast majority of the tools and technologies we have been using in Fluance have been adapted for use in Azure, and developments and improvements continue.

Once we have overcome the learning curve, we have a user-friendly environment that allows us to answer many questions in a short time.

Thank you for this interview, Juan!

We asked Simón Andrés how it was get virtually into a team during the corona pandemic and the lockdown in Spain. Here’s what he told us.

Hello folks

I have already spent 6 months with the Fluance team and it seemed like it was the last week when I joined.

At the begining, there were a lot of things that I didn’t know about my new job, the programming languages I had to use or how to proceed with it. I have just finished my grade about web development. But then I realized that I had a lot of new things to learn in order to be able to complete the new and exciting tasks Fluance had for me. This was the moment I started to enjoy spending time with my teammates and developing in the frontend area.

I’m looking forward to becoming a professional developer and this is going to get real thanks to Fluance’s project.

We are living in tough times with corona and sometimes the “home office” is inevitable, but I hope we can meet face to face soon and share some beers in the real world.

Two apprentices – two experiences

Apprentice’s project

Our two apprentices had only 2 weeks of time to bring something to life. A project has had to be found and realized in order to teach our newbe the most important skills at Fluance.

Remo Misteli, 3rd year in apprenticeship:

The main goal was to create a project for Metodij he will enjoy and that would work in the end. Because we only had 2 weeks time to set it up, we couldn’t go to deep into details.

Before giving the tasks to Metodij, I checked them all first by myself, just to be sure where problems could accur. Afterwards, I could explain him what I expected.

After the project is finished, Metodij is able to work on it at home, if he wants to tighten his new skills. I liked to help him every time he asked me to. And I enjoyed working on this joint project more than I ever expected.

About the project: We set up a chatroom. Feel free to try it out. 

Metodij Krshkov, 1st year in apprenticeship

Our project was to build a chatroom. We had a goal to finish this project and upload it.

I was working together with Remo but not at the same level. While Remo did more the difficult job, I was busy with beginner stuff because I’m a newcomer in the coding world.

As already mentioned, I had Remo behind me all the time in case of questions.

The start was kind of hard with coding, but over the time I came slowly into it and was able to improve my skills and knowledge.

From my site I’m ready to work again on the chatroom the next time I’m in the office. I’m really happy with our final product because it’s something I can see anytime show to anyone. It’s a cool project.

1. Since when does Clinique de Génolier (CDG) has had the need to get a better overview for the planning of surgeries?
Since forever, we have many usecases/business processes requiring optimization, it just took a while to be able to prioritize this one.

2. What caused the need for change?
When Fluance had access to all the appropriate data to produce the Whiteboard we decided it was time to do the last 20% of the effort and deliver this data to the clinics in an appropriate and ergonomic way.

3. How did the «Surgery Board» affect the work of physicians and nursing staff?
They now have an instant access to the surgery planning, they don’t need to call or walk every time they need an information. They also can better prepare their workday with one consolidated overview and save a lot of time by just knowing when an operation is delayed. For management, we are now able to see the overall activity of surgery and understand factually what creates delays and bottlenecks in the surgery processes.

4. How was the collaboration with Fluance AG from your point of view?
Excellent, they were able to efficiently provide us with a first version which was then iterated very quickly. They understood the need well from the beginning on.

5. If you could decide again to realise the “Surgery Board” with Fluance – would you do it again?
Yes, definitely.

6. What would you advise other clinics to do, who struggle with same kind of problems as CDG did before “Surgery Board” was available?
Buy a big screen with a computing stick, put the Whiteboard on it. You won’t regret it.

7. What is the added value of having a middleware ecosystem supporting a project like this? Why not go with the usual softwares?
I believe there is no future without a middleware, legacy architecture are hard to scale and maintain. It always seems like a quick win at the beginning but never on the long run. For us, who invested in the middleware before this project, it was an no brainer. Surgery planning solution (like many other software) are not personalized enough for our need, cannot be distributed (fat client) as efficiently as the Whiteboard (web).

8. Last but not least: How do you feel now after it’s done? Did you celebrate with your team? 
Well, for us it’s not over yet, we have not yet rolled it out in every business unit, hopefully we will celebrate it before 2020 ends.

Michael Salom, thank you for this interview!

Friday, 24.01.2020 was a cold and foggy day. We left the office about 16:30 and headed for the St. Ursen church in Solothurn. There we met a retired and passionate city guide. She initiated us into the secrets of the number 11, which can be found everywhere in the city (steps, fountains, towers, etc.).

1.5 hours later the interesting tour was finished and we were freezing. To warm up, we visited the nearby restaurant “Sternen” (means “stars”), which is famous for its delicious pizzas. The evening was very convivial and officially ended at about 10 pm.

If you feel inspired by the photos, you should definitely enjoy a city tour through Solothurn. Various themes are available. I’m sure there’s something for everyone. https://www.solothurn-city.ch/en/discover-solothurn/guided-city-tours

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