Privacy Policy - GENKNOWME

This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) explains how your personal information is collected, used, and disclosed by genknowme SA and its subsidiaries and affiliated companies (“genknowme” or “we” or “us”). This Policy applies to users of the websites offered by genknowme, including the website located at: www.genknowme.ch (collectively, the “Sites”), but it does not apply to websites, applications, or services that do not display or link to this statement, or those that display or link to different privacy statements.

This policy also applied to the data associated with genetic and epigenetic analysis.

1. Key definitions

Applicable Law – means any law, by-law, ordinance, proclamation and/or statutory regulation which the Parties are required to observe by reason of this Policy and matters incidental thereto, including, but not limited to, the GDPR.

Consent of the data subject – any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or he

EEA – European Economic Area

GDPR – the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, 2016/679.

Genknowme Service – Genknowme offers an Epigenetic assessment that individualizes and quantifies the impact of lifestyle at DNA level based on a blood Sample.

Personal Information – information that can be used to identify you, either alone or in combination with other information. Personal Information will include all the following categories.

Pseudonymised – replacing the identifying markers of your Information with artificial identifiers to reduce the association between the data subject and the Information during processing.

Sample – patient blood sample collected using the Genknow|me testing kit.

Personal information includes:

Contact Information – information you provide about yourself when directly contacting our Services (e.g. name, email, address, phone number).

Sensitive Information – information about your health, Epigenetic and Genetic Information, and certain Self-Reported Information such as racial and ethnic origin or sexual orientation.

Epigenetic Information – Sensitive Information regarding the modification (addition of a methyl group) on particular position on your genome, generated through processing of your Sample by genknowme or by its contractors, successors, or assignees; or otherwise processed by and/or contributed to genknowme. Epigenetic information collected by genknowme is used to estimate biological age and lifestyle habits. It include as well some genetic information (SNPs, i.e. the As, Ts, Cs, and Gs at particular locations in your genome), needed to perform internal controls for calibration and adjustement, e.g. sex and ethnic origin.

Self-Reported Information – Information you provide directly to us, either through the Services or through a third party, including your disease conditions, other health-related information, lifestyle habits (e.g., nutrition, physical activity, consumption of alcohol, smoking of tobacco products), and other information that you enter into surveys, forms, or features.

User Content – information, data, text, software, music, audio, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or other materials – other than Genetic Information and Self-Reported Information-generated by users of genknowme Services and transmitted, whether publicly or privately, to or through genknowme.

Web-Behavior Information – information on how you use our Services collected through log files, cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies, (e.g., device information (device identifiers), IP address, browser type, domains, page views).

Services Partners – Partner who will collect the sample and self-reported information in order to enable genknowme to perform its service. Usually such partners are Clinics or Medical Professionals.

2. What information we collect

Genknowme collects the information described in the following paragraphs.

2.1 Information you provide directly to us

When you directly contact us for information about Services, we collect Personal Information, which may include your name and contact information (e.g. email, phone number), as well as any other content included in the contact request form (e.g., email, letter).

When you contact us on the behalf of a third person, you provide us with Personal Information about others, if others give us your information, or if you authorize another individual to share or send your Personal Information to our third party service provider(s) for the purpose of requesting the Service or actions within your data protection rights, we will only use that information for the purpose for which it was provided to us.

When you sign up for our mailing list or newsletter, we collect Personal Information, which include your name, date of birth and contact information (e.g. email, phone number), as well as any other content included in the email.

When you contact or correspond with us about our Service, we collect information to: track and respond to your inquiry; investigate any breach of our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy or applicable laws or regulations; and analyze and improve our Services.

2.2 Information related to our epigenetic testing services

To use our Services, our Service Partner(s) must collect a Sample using the provided genknowme testing kit. Before the test is carried out and on the basis of the patient information provided by genknowme, our service partners must have informed you about the epigenetic analyses that will be carried out, the processing of personal data and your rights. Based on this information, your explicit consent must be obtained before the test can be performed.If consent is granted, our third-party Service Partner (s) will transfer the Sample to us together with the pseudonymized Personal Information. The latter will include Self-Reported Information in the form of a questionnaire. This data will then be processed jointly with our laboratory in order to perform the necessary analysis.

Once processed, your Sample and DNA are destroyed after the laboratory completes its work, subject to laboratory legal and regulatory requirements. Unless you do not consent to data storage and additional analyses your data will be stored in its pseudonymized form for a period of 10 years. The data are kept to be able to perform comparison of data over time should the patient desire to repeat the test at a later stage.

Information regarding your Epigenetic Information, is generated when we analyze and process your Sample, or when you otherwise contribute or access your Epigenetic Information through our Services. Epigenetic Information includes the genknowme results reported to you by us or our Service Partner (s) as part of our Services, and may be used for other purposes, as outlined in Section 3.

2.3 Information collected online through tracking technology

On our websites we may use cookies and similar technologies (such as web beacons, tags, scripts and device identifiers). Cookies are small data files stored on your hard drive by a website. When you visit our websites, some information is automatically collected (e.g., computer’s operating system, Internet Protocol (IP) address, access times, browser type and language, and the website you visited before). Cookies help us:

customize and improve our Sites and your experience;
monitor website users’ activity. We use cookies to see which areas and features are popular and to count visits to our Sites;
provide security;
gather demographic information about our user base;
offer our Services to you;
monitor the success of marketing programs;
serve targeted advertising on our site and on other sites around the Internet.

If you reject cookies[1] [2] , you may still use our Sites, but your ability to use some features or areas of our Sites may be limited. We may use the following types of cookies:

Essential cookies: these types of cookies are necessary for us to configure parts of the Sites without making wholesale changes and disruption.

Analytics cookies: we use Google Analytics to help us understand how Users engage with the Sites. Like many services, Google Analytics uses first-party cookies to track User interactions, as in our case, where they are used to collect information about how Users use our Site. We use the information we get from Google Analytics only to improve the Sites and Services. We do not merge information collected through any Google advertising product with Personal Information collected elsewhere by our Services. Learn more about how Google collects and uses data here. To opt out of Google Analytics Advertising Features please use Google Ad Settings. To opt out of Google Analytics entirely please use this link

3. How we use the information we collect

Genknowme will use and share your Personal Information with third parties only in the ways that are described in this Policy.

We may create anonymized data records from your Personal Information such that you can no longer be identified using any means reasonably available to us or to any third party that has access to that anonymized data. We use this anonymous data to analyze request and usage patterns so that we may enhance the content of our services and improve Site navigation. We reserve the right to use anonymous data for any purpose and disclose anonymous data to third parties in our sole discretion. Genetic Information is never to be considered as part of the described anonymization process.

3.1 To provide you with Services, analyze and improve our Services

We use personal information collected through our Sites for purposes described in this Policy or disclosed to you on our Sites or in connection with our services. In particular, we use your information to:

operate and improve our Sites, products, and services;
understand you and your preferences to enhance your experience and enjoyment using our sites, products, and services;
respond to your comments and questions and provide customer service;
provide and deliver products and services you request;
to send you related information, including confirmations, invoices, technical notices, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages;
communicate with you about new contests, promotions, rewards, upcoming events, and other news about products and services offered by genknowme and our selected partners;

Given your consent, the information may be used in its pseudonymized form for research purposes. The purpose of the research is to develop further testing capabilities. You may withdraw your consent to participate in genknowme research at any time by contacting us (info in Section 10) or our third-party service provider(s).

3.2 To process, analyze and deliver your Epigenetic testing results

As described above in Section 2.2, to provide you with our Service, we receive your Sample together with your pseudonymized Personal Information from our third-party service provider(s). Once genotyped, we further analyze your Personal and Epigenetic Information to provide you with our Results Report containing:

A summary of the Personal and Self-reported Information provided by you the day the Sample is taken;
Your biological age and youthfulness (the so-called “Youth Capital”). The biological age is based on the analysis of specific epigenetic markers accounting for lifestyle effects. The Youth Capital represents the years gained or lost by comparing chronological age and epigenetic age;
A quantitative representation of the methylation patterns on selected DNA regions for each lifestyle and environmental factors: tobacco consumption, alcohol consumption, diet (fruits and vegetables), and physical activity. The representation is provided in the form of a score from 0 to +100, which is indicative of where the user locates himself/herself as compared to the average general population as per the lifestyle and environmental factor of interest;
A visual informative graph representing the impact of your lifestyle factor of interest on the overall health and the “resistance” versus “sensibility” of each lifestyle on the overall wellness. This graph is based on the comparison between the Self-reported Information and the information measured using the test;
For each evaluated lifestyle and environmental factor, a series of recommended behavioral adjustments that might have a positive effect on your overall wellness;
If the test is taken more than once, infographics on the evolution of your lifestyle and environmental factors indicators and of your overall wellness over time.

3.3 To allow you to share your Personal Information with others

As per the applicable law, you may have the right to ask genknowme to share information with others, including Personal Information, through the Services. The ability of sharing your Information will be coordinated together with you and our third-party service provider(s).

3.4 To share your Information when requested by law

Under some circumstances, we may need to disclose certain information when required by law, regulations, judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants, or orders or if we believe that disclosure is reasonably necessary.

We could be requested together with our third-party service provider(s) to disclose Personal Information and Epigenetic Information in coordination with regulatory authorities in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

If we are legally required to disclose any Information available to us, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you and our third-party provider(s) unless we are legally prohibited from doing so.

3.5 To provide you with marketing communications

Occasionally we may send you information for the aim of marketing. Where required by applicable law, we obtain your consent prior to sending marketing messages to you.

You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us (info in section 10) or our third-party service provider(s). However, the withdrawal of your consent will not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

4. What information we share with third parties

We disclose your Pseudonymised Personal and Epigenetic Information as described below and as elsewhere in this Policy:

With our Service Partner who work with us, as necessary for them to provide their services to us in order for us to fulfil our contract;
To (i) comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process (as described in section 3.4), (ii) to protect the rights and property of genknowme our agents, customers, members, and others including to enforce our agreements, policies and terms of use or (iii) in an emergency to protect the personal safety of genknowme, its customers, or any person;
In connection with or during negotiation of any merger, financing, acquisition, or dissolution, transaction or proceeding involving sale, transfer, divestiture, or disclosure of all or a portion of our business or assets to another company. In the event of an insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership, personal information may also be transferred as a business asset. If another company acquires our company, business, or assets, that company will possess the personal information collected by us and will assume the rights and obligations regarding your personal information as described in this Policy.

5. How we store information

Personal and Epigenomic Information are stored by us or by one of our third-party service provider(s). Information may be processed in any country of the European Union but information is securely stored in Switzerland.

We keep your personal information for as long as we need it to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, and to comply with applicable legal and regulatory obligations. In particular, when determining how long we retain personal data, we take into account how long we need it to:

Maintain business records for analysis and/or audit purposes;
Comply with record retention requirements under the law;
Defend or bring any existing or potential legal claims;
Deal with any complaints regarding our Sites/any services provided in our Sites;
Perform comparison of data over should the patient desire to repeat the test at a later stage as part of our Services (for this purpose information will be stored in its pseudonymized form for a period of 10 years).

We will delete your personal information when it is no longer required for these purposes. If there is any information that we are unable, for technical reasons, to delete entirely from our systems, we will put in place appropriate measures to prevent any further processing or use of the data.

We may destroy or delete the personal information we have collected from you at any time, at our discretion.

6. Security measures

We only use the services of third-party provider(s) that meet and commit to our security standards. Genknowme uses industry standard security measures designed to protect the Personal Information collected and stored. While we cannot guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of data will not occur, we use reasonable efforts to prevent this using state of the art security measures.

Genknowme’s responsibility regarding your Personal Information is limited to cases of intentional misconduct and gross negligence, and we otherwise do not accept any liability for damages resulting from any instances of data breach or data loss.

7. Your data protection rights

You have certain rights regarding your personal information, subject to applicable law. These include the following rights to:

Access your personal information;
Rectify the information we hold about you;
Erase your personal information;
Restrict our use of your personal information;
Object to our use of your personal information;
Receive your personal information in a usable electronic format and transmit it to a third party (right to data portability).

As identity related to Epigenetic information is maintained by our Service Partner(s), we are not able to respond to requests related to such information. If you would like to exercise the above listed rights with regards to Epigenetic information please contact the Service Partner that provided you with the test. They will contact us and we will do everything to respond to your rights.

8. Changes to this policy

This Policy is subject to occasional revision, and if we make any material changes in the way we use your personal information, we will prominently post notice of the changes on our Sites.

If you have provided us with your email address, we may also send you an email notifying you of our updated Policy. Continued use of our Site or service, following notice of such changes shall indicate your acknowledgement of such changes and agreement to be bound by the terms and conditions of such changes.

9. How to contact us

If you have any questions about this Policy, please contact us via email at info@genknowme.com, or by mail at Genknowme S.A., Avenue de Jolimont 13, 1005 Lausanne, Switzerland.

10. How to contact the appropriate authority

In any circumstance you wish to report a complaint or if you feel that genknowme has not addressed your concern in a satisfactory manner, you may contact the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) Office or your local Data Protection Authority.

FDPIC can be contacted via email info@edoeb.admin.ch or by phone +41 (0)58 462 43 95. For additional information please use this link.