Data Privacy Statement for Medical Inquiries

We, Bayer (Schweiz) AG and Berlis AG, both headquartered at Uetlibergstrasse 132, CH-8045 Zurich, Switzerland (hereinafter also referred to as “we”, “us” and “our”) hereby wish to inform you how we, as data controller, process your personal data when you contact us with a medical inquiry.

1. What data is processed, why and on what legal basis?

You may contact our Medical Information Service for the various purposes outlined below. If when doing so you disclose personal data to us, we process this data, including (if disclosed) information about your health, in order to handle your inquiry and for quality assurance purposes. If you send us a medical inquiry, we enter the personal data contained therein in our database for medical information. We process the following personal data, in order to process your medical inquiry and to send you a relevant response:

  • Contact information (e.g. your name, address, phone/fax/mobile number, email or other (online) contact information)
  • Demographic data (e.g. age/age group, date of birth, sex)


If such information is part of your inquiry, we can also process information which is considered to be especially sensitive personal data, e.g. (this list is not exhaustive):

  • Data on religious, ideological, political or trade union-related views or activities
  • Data on health, private life, race or ethnicity
  • Genetic data
  • Biometric data that uniquely identifies a natural person
  • Data on prosecutions or sanctions under administrative or criminal law
  • Data on social security measures


The legal basis for the processing of your personal data depends on your reason for contacting us.

If you have questions about taking and using our products and we process health-related data about you in order to respond to your question, we require your consent for this as the legal basis for data processing. Health-related data may only be processed and a recording of a telephone conversation made for training and auditing purposes in this context if you have granted us your consent for this, e.g. expressly over the telephone or in your written inquiry.

If you report side effects, product complaints or other incidents related to product safety to us, the processing of this data is permitted in the public interest in order to guarantee a high standard of safety for our products. We are also required by law to report events related to product safety in anonymized form to the responsible authorities and possibly to the marketing authorization holder of the product.

If you have general inquiries (e.g. requests for information material, questions about delivery times), the legal basis for the processing of your personal data is derived from the direct connection with the conclusion or processing of a contract.

2. Disclosure of personal data
2.1 Commissioned data processing

We sometimes deploy specialized service providers to process your inquiry and thus also your personal data on our behalf. We carefully select and regularly monitor all our service providers. They process personal data only at our request and in accordance with our instructions on the basis of corresponding commissioned data processing contracts. 

The service provider commissioned by us for specific medical inquiries, Conduent Commercial Solutions, LLC, receives your inquiry either within the EU, the UK or Türkiye and/or processes them there.

2.2 Forwarding within Bayer (Schweiz) AG and Berlis AG and transmission to third parties

Access to your personal data is limited to those employees who are involved in processing and responding to your inquiry, or are to be informed thereof in the case of an inquiry from a specialist due to their professional activities, as well as to the call center operator Conduent Commercial Solutions, LLC and its Group companies (see 2.1 for more information). Inquiries for which the Medical Information Service is not responsible are forwarded to the specialist departments responsible within our company. Reports of side effects, product complaints or other information about incidents related to product safety are forwarded to the Pharmacovigilance Department or to Quality Assurance. In accordance with the legal requirements, this data may be reported to the responsible authorities or any marketing authorization holder of the product as well as being transmitted to other Bayer companies. If your data is transmitted to a country outside the European Union or the European Economic Area for which the statutory competent authority has not ascertained an adequate level of data protection, we will ensure adequate protection of your personal data, in particular by entering into special agreements with other Bayer companies. Transfer to third-party companies in such countries takes place subject to the standard contractual clauses recognized by the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) for the transmission of personal data to data processors in third countries and, where necessary, subject to additional security measures. The level of data protection in the target country is regularly monitored and the measures are adjusted if necessary.

3. Retention periods for personal data

Your personal data is stored for a maximum period of two years in our database for medical inquiries. If you have consented to the recording of the conversation for training or auditing purposes, these recordings will be retained for a period of 90 days. If your personal data is forwarded to the Pharmacovigilance Department or to Quality Assurance, it is additionally stored there in compliance with the statutory provisions for the storage and reporting of information for pharmacovigilance and QA purposes. We are required by law to archive information about pharmacovigilance reports and product complaints at least for the duration of the product life cycle and for an additional ten years after the product in question has been withdrawn from the market.

4. Information about your rights

With regard to your personal data, you can request us at any time: 

a. to provide information about and access to your personal data stored by us (including right of data portability);

b. to correct or delete your personal data, to restrict the processing of your data and you may object to the processing of your data;

You may withdraw your consent at any time, without this affecting the lawfulness of processing that takes place prior to the withdrawal.

You may also file a complaint with the competent data protection authority if you suspect an infringement. The competent data protection authority in Switzerland is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner.

Please note that these rights are not absolute and we reserve the right to enforce the restrictions prescribed by law.

To exercise your rights, please contact us as described below. Please note that we may ask for a copy of identification documents if your identity is not clearly recognizable and cannot be established in any other way.

Should you have any questions in connection with data protection or your consent or wish to exercise your rights, please contact: Bayer (Schweiz) AG, Data Privacy Officer, c/o Bayer Consumer Care AG, Peter Merian-Strasse 84, CH-4002 Basel or send an e-mail to privacy_ch@bayer.com.


October 2022

MA-OTH-CH-0056-1