FAQ

Your database is hosted in Switzerland (Infomaniak, Geneva data centre, ISO 27001 certified) and backed up every night in encrypted form. Names, messages, answers and watch measurements are encrypted in it; the messaging ID is also encrypted at rest by the application.

Your free-text questions, a summary of your follow-up without your first name and any photos or documents you send are read by Claude (Anthropic, United States). Other services (Google for voice and Google Wallet, OpenStreetMap for nearby places, Stripe for a payment) are involved only if you use them.

You can access it, along with the carers you explicitly authorise. A carer or coach with no link to you can open your file for 24 hours by giving a reason, and you are notified. Technical logs do not contain the text of your messages.

On Telegram, you must be 16 or older in Switzerland, and 18 or older in the European Union, the United Kingdom and Australia. At the start, Trévor asks for your country, then asks you to confirm your age, without asking for your date of birth. Trévor keeps only this confirmation. For other countries, Trévor's rule is 16.

If you are younger than that, talk about your health with a parent and your care team. An adult parent can use Trévor to answer about their child. Enrolment in the study follows the same age rule.

The remark is correct, and we say so ourselves. A conversation with a bot on Telegram is not end-to-end encrypted: Telegram keeps the messages on its servers and reads them under its own rules. The same holds for any bot on WhatsApp or Messenger. Claude (Anthropic) is a second provider, which reads only your free-text questions. Here is what we do to keep this as small as possible.

• Little identity in the conversation. Trévor asks for no family name, no postal address, no Swiss social-insurance (AVS) number and no health-insurance number.
• Exchanges with your carers stay outside Telegram. A carer's message or file opens through a personal link, in a secure space served by our server in Switzerland. Telegram receives only a notification.
• Your record lives in Switzerland. Your follow-up, treatments and diary are in a database hosted in Geneva, with names, messages, answers and watch measurements encrypted, and encrypted backups.
• Claude reads nothing without your consent, and receives the minimum. Trévor asks for a separate consent before the first message is sent, and you withdraw it whenever you want: without consent, Trévor stays in guided mode. With your consent, Claude reads your free-text questions, the recent history and a summary of your follow-up, without your first name or messaging ID. Swiss social-insurance numbers, phone numbers, IBANs and email addresses are removed before sending, your position is rounded to ten kilometres, and your relatives' contact details and your care team's messages never leave. Photos you send arrive without their metadata. Under its terms, Anthropic does not train its models on this data and deletes it within 30 days. Once the configuration prepared for it is activated, Claude runs for Trévor in the European Union (Amazon Web Services, Frankfurt), a jurisdiction Swiss law recognises as protective, with no fallback to the United States; the current location is shown under “My data” in the bot. As soon as a capable enough model is served in Zurich, processing will move to Switzerland.
• You can erase everything. The /supprimer command erases your account and your files on our server. Encrypted backups disappear within 30 days, and outside services erase on their own schedule.

For the most sensitive information, use the Android app: it talks directly to the Swiss server, with no Telegram in between. Also turn on two-step verification for your messaging app and a screen lock, because your messaging account is the real way in. Write in the conversation only what you accept to see kept by Telegram, and keep the rest for your doctor. The full detail, service by service, is on the Data protection page. The Your safety on Telegram page explains who sees what.

Yes, at any time, from Trévor's “🔐 My data” menu:

• view your data;
• export it as CSV, JSON or FHIR;
• delete everything in one tap.

An email to david.issom@hug.ch achieves the same result.

The “Enrol” button opens the enrolment page (two minutes). Payment is made online by card or TWINT, or by bank transfer to HES-SO Genève with the reference “Projet Trevor”.

Funds are received by HES-SO Genève and allocated to the Trévor project; they finance the assistant's development and hosting, its free access for patients, the remuneration of expert patients and the clinical evaluation.

• Payment in three interest-free instalments by bank transfer;
• 50% solidarity rate for members of the Swiss Sickle Cell Association without income or on disability insurance;
• full refund if you withdraw after the free interview.

The Services page presents the whole offer, audience by audience: patients, relatives, care teams, organisations and future peer coaches.

Using Trévor is already the most useful contribution. As you use it, Trévor offers you two short pieces of feedback, each at a set moment:

• After a few days: an interest survey, anonymous, five minutes, to say whether the tool helps you. You answer it in Trévor, on the web, or with the /enquete command.
• After two weeks: the BUS-11 questionnaire, a scientific scale that measures ease of use (eleven questions, three minutes).

To get more involved, two separate paths:

• The test programme (/beta command): you sign a confidentiality agreement inside Trévor, then immediately access features under development.
• The TREVOR-PILOTE pilot study: you join a waiting list. Recruitment will start once the Geneva cantonal research ethics committee (CCER) has authorised it.

No. The test programme falls under service improvement and data-protection law: the agreement is signed in Trévor, data is processed with your consent, and experimental features are shown for information only.

The pilot study, by contrast, is research involving human beings submitted to the ethics committee; it starts once authorised.

In one click: Oura, Fitbit, Garmin, Withings, Whoop, Polar, Suunto, Strava, Ultrahuman and more. With the Android companion app: Samsung Health and Google (Health Connect) sync automatically, every 30 minutes; a button asks Android for permission to send in the background, essential on Samsung. By file import: Apple Health, Samsung Health and Google Fit, for those who prefer.

Trévor displays your measurements and, if you enable it, an estimate of your 48-hour crisis risk.

This estimate is an experimental feature, at the research stage, with no clinical validation to date; it is shown for information only, never as a diagnosis, and every care decision remains your medical team's. You enable it after a warning in Trévor and disable it at any time.

Yes. When you first set up Trévor, you choose your disease. Trévor offers dedicated profiles, each with its own questionnaires, warning signs and emergency card:

• rare or neglected diseases: sickle cell disease, thalassaemia, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, malaria;
• more common conditions: migraine, chronic low-back pain, electromagnetic hypersensitivity;
• life stages: the postpartum period, the weeks and months after a birth.

Living with several diagnoses? You can declare them all, with one primary diagnosis and secondary diagnoses: Trévor's answers, the warning signs and the care card take every one into account, and your care team finds each of them in your record.

For a disease without a dedicated profile, a generic profile remains available: you keep tracking, answers and the emergency card, without disease-specific questionnaires. For malaria, health professionals additionally have a guided management protocol based on WHO guidelines.

Yes, wherever Telegram works, in twenty-five languages (French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Lingala, Swahili, Hindi, Wolof, Bambara, Yoruba, Hausa, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, Igbo, Greek, Persian, Albanian, Tamil). Tracking, learning, the emergency card and live answers work from any country, and the emergency numbers adapt to the country set in your profile (verified for Switzerland, France and Europe).

Africa and patchy networks: the Android app keeps your notes without internet and sends them when the network returns. Local emergency numbers for African countries are not validated yet: Trévor asks you to check them with your care centre.

Two caveats: content prioritises Geneva and French-speaking Switzerland, and “Call my care team” prepares the call to your own care centre; outside Switzerland, your own medical team answers.

Yes, but only as a fallback channel. Trévor is designed for Telegram: everything works there, and we recommend it. If you can use Telegram, choose it.

On WhatsApp, the experience is clearly worse:

• limited buttons: three choices, or a list of ten, with shortened labels; long menus become numbered lists;
• no files: documents and PDFs arrive as links;
• sharing your position is less convenient, and there is no shortcut keyboard;
• no Telegram ecosystem: no Coach Drépano channels, and none of that app's own gestures;
• less privacy: WhatsApp belongs to Meta, which hosts conversations and can read their content;
• watch and Android app: the link with WhatsApp has not been tested yet.

The WhatsApp number is given on request at david.issom@hug.ch, for people who cannot use Telegram.

Yes, on both. Trévor opens in Telegram, on Android as on iPhone: it is the most complete version.

The Coach Drépano app exists for Android only: medical record, journal, medicines, challenges, travel, widgets, Wear OS watch, offline mode. On iPhone, use Trévor in Telegram.

The Android app stays useful without internet. Your emergency card, crisis plan, information sheets and useful places are kept on the phone.

• A pain, mood, treatment or crisis logged without network waits in a queue, then goes out by itself when the network returns.
• In a crisis without network, a ready-made SMS alerts the people on your call list. It contains only your pain level, no location and no medical detail.
• The rescue painkiller is calculated on the phone, marked “offline estimate”.

The Telegram bot and the place search need internet. Local emergency numbers for African countries are not validated yet: the app asks you to check them.

Yes, by email, after a preview. You enter your pharmacy's and your doctor's addresses once, then your medicines: Trévor tracks your stock and warns you before it runs out.

You order several medicines in a single email, or ask your doctor for a renewal. You read the full message: nothing is sent without your tap, and never directly from a widget. It contains your name, date of birth, the medicines and your contact details, nothing else.

You can keep several prescriptions, as photos or PDFs. Trévor reads the end of validity on the prescription; if it cannot find it, it shows “end not read” and assumes no duration. You are warned 30 then 7 days before the end, and the original file is kept only if you ask.

In the app, you choose who to alert: your loved ones (Trévor sends them the message), your doctor and the emergency services (calls you make from your phone).

You also tick the data attached: painkiller taken, today's treatments, latest measurements. Your location goes only if you allow it, with every alert, and is never kept.

A warning sign (difficulty breathing, chest pain, fever of 38.3 °C or more, vision or speech trouble, numbness or weakness, confusion) is treated as an emergency: call 144.