Clinic AI in Zurich in 2026, section 13 records and the practice licence

The private care market in Zurich

The canton grew by 11%, or 165,000 people, in the ten years to the end of 2025, and migration from abroad accounted for about four fifths of that growth.¹ The city of Zurich alone added about 43,000 residents over the decade.¹

About 472,000 residents hold a foreign passport, and 18% of the population is 65 or older, a share the canton expects to keep rising.¹

The rules a Zurich practice works under

The Gesundheitsdirektion licenses the doctor. Anyone working in the canton on their own professional responsibility needs a Berufsausübungsbewilligung, whether self-employed or employed by an AG or GmbH, no work may start before it is granted, and processing usually takes six weeks from a complete file.²

The Gesundheitsgesetz sets the record standard. Under section 13, every health professional keeps a record for each patient in which the author of each entry must be immediately visible, electronic entries must be dated, stored unalterably and retrievable at any time, and the record is kept for ten years after the last treatment.³ Patients are entitled to a copy.³ In wai the clinician signs each note, and every message, draft, approval and signature is written to an event log the practice can export.

The FADP sets the data duties nationwide. The FADP requires a data protection impact assessment before processing likely to create a high risk, naming large-scale processing of sensitive personal data as a case in point, and a breach likely to create a high risk goes to the FDPIC as quickly as possible.⁴ Where a decision rests solely on automated processing, the patient may ask for a person to review it.⁴

The FDPIC reads the Act as directly applicable to AI. Providers and users must make the purpose, functioning and data sources of AI processing transparent, and people who correspond with a language model have the right to know they are dealing with a machine.⁵ wai drafts and a person at the practice reads, edits and sends, and patient data is not sold and not used to train external models.

The canton's EPD page records that the main EPD operator in Zurich will stop running it at the end of 2026, and that the Gesundheitsdirektion will not check providers' EPD connection duty from 2027 until further notice.⁶ wai is built to connect to Switzerland's electronic patient record, the EPD. We set up your clinic's connection with you.

wai hosts each clinic's records in its own country, under that country's rules. We set this up with your clinic. wai is compliant with these rules and built for clinics in Zurich. For a Zurich practice that country is Switzerland.

The languages Zurich patients write in

In the 2022 federal structural survey, 10.8% of Zurich residents aged 15 and over gave English as a main language, the third highest share of any canton and well above the Swiss average of 7.1%.⁷ Zurich is also one of the few cantons where more people than the Swiss average of 16.1% name several main languages.⁷

wai reads and drafts in any language, so an English email gets an English draft and a German WhatsApp a German one, each approved by the team before it is sent.⁸

What a demo shows in Zurich

The demo opens on two messages that arrived after hours. One is an English email at 9:15pm from a family who moved to Küsnacht in the spring, asking for a first appointment for both parents before school starts. The other is a German WhatsApp at 6:40am from a long-standing patient in Oerlikon who needs to move Thursday's follow-up.

wai reads both in each patient's thread, checks the clinicians' busy times in Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar so only open slots are offered, and drafts replies in the practice's voice. The coordinator approves both at 8am. The booking link takes a deposit in Swiss francs by card or Apple Pay through the practice's own Stripe account, with the practice as merchant of record. The patient's confirmation arrives with a receipt and the intake questionnaire.

In the consult room the clinician sees the drafted note and referral letter, edits and signs, and the signature is logged against their name, which is the authorship section 13 asks for.³

For health systems, insurers and the canton

Zurich hospital groups, insurers and cantonal services can have a system of their own built on wai, under their brand and hosted in Switzerland, starting with one defined pathway and its measures. Data, configuration and model rights, portability and exit terms are agreed in the contract, as set out on the page for health systems and governments.

Where to start

First, check that every clinician who will sign notes holds a current Berufsausübungsbewilligung.² Second, write a short data protection impact assessment for the scribe and the inbox, since both process health data at scale, and add the AI notice to the privacy statement and booking page.⁴⁵

Third, check how an AI-drafted entry carries its author, its date and an unalterable history, against section 13.³ Fourth, prepare the consent line each doctor says before recording, in German and English, using the consent form template. Then count last month's messages by language and by hour and bring the count to the demo. Treat this as general information on Zurich and Swiss law, read on 15 October 2026, and confirm its application with the practice's adviser.

Frequently asked questions