Michael Böni claims databases at 80 per cent of the country’s hospitals can be cracked using the same computer programme.

Parked in his car outside Zurich University Hospital, Böni - whose experiment was sanctioned by the hospital authorities - used a laptop computer to gain access to hundreds of patient files stored on the intensive care unit’s computer system.

“It was actually quite easy,” Böni told swissinfo. “There was no specialist knowledge necessary and we used some tools that are readily available on the Internet.”

Bruno Baeriswyl, a Zurich-based data protection specialist, told swissinfo that he was not at all surprised by the ease with which security systems had been bypassed.

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