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Issued on: 24/12/2021 - 18:32

French company Doctolibs website and app allow users to book medical appointments through an online portal. They boomed in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic allowing many to access both vaccinations and consultations with relative ease and the company now plans to expand to Italy and Germany. But the emergence of a private firm to fill a gap in Frances public health sector also highlights the countrys failure to modernise the medical services industry.

The French governments latest Covid-19 announcements are always followed by a mad rush to the Doctolib website and app, with people rapidly filling all available time slots. When it was first announced that a health pass would be required to access restaurants and public venues back in July, some 1.35 million peopleraced to book a vaccine appointment, crashingDoctolibs site.

In the 24 hours after Health Minister Olivier Vran announced that a third jab would be required for thehealth pass to continue being valid from January 15, more than 1.2 million peoplerushed to Doctolib to book a booster.

With 60 million users and an estimated turnover of between 150 million and 200 million in 2020, Doctolib has established itselfas a French tech success story.

This Frenchunicorn meaning a start-up whose valuation has exceeded $1 billion withoutgoing public has seen its payroll triple since it was set up in 2013. With more than 1,700 employees, the company has continued toexpand: It currently has morethan 250 job offers posted on its website forlocations in France,Germany and Italy. In October, it acquired an Italian company performing the sameservice,Dottori.it.

Doctolib has become a key player in vaccination in France ever sinceCovid-19 emerged, offering access tonearly 90 percent of French Covid vaccination centres, according toLe Monde.

Competitors have emerged including Maija, Allodocteur and Vitodoc but Doctolibs rapid development and its continuing position as a near monopoly in the online medical appointments field raises some difficult questions.

Healthcare is a sensitive area of the economy because of the personal data recorded; and storing this data safely is an essential public service, said Frdric Bizard, an economist specialised in public health, to FRANCE 24.

Doctor and patient associations raised some of the issues relating to Doctolib at Frances highest court for administrative law, the Council of State, in March. They argued that because Doctolib was storing patient data on Amazon Web Services the cloud computing arm of the US behemoth then Amazon, as a US company,would be required to comply with any demands for information made by US intelligence agencies.

The court ruled in Doctolibs favour, saying that safeguards were already in place in case US authorities request French patient data from Amazon. Doctolib also noted that it encrypts its data.

But an investigation by France Inter radio in March found that Doctolibs data was not encrypted once it arrived in the Amazon Web Services cloud.Moreover, Doctolibs German branch found itself embroiled in controversy over data usage in June, when media outlets accused it of sending information about local users to Facebook and the Internet marketing company Outbrain. Information onsearches people performed on the Doctolib site had been sold to the two firms along with their IP addresses.

Doctolib immediately back-pedaled, deleting those cookies from its German version and promising never to sell such data again.

Above all, Doctolib is a private company whose aim is to make money and to expand quickly; the French government mustnt forget that, said Bizard.

The government had left a gap in public services that was then exploited by Doctolib, Bizard said, adding that the companys runaway success was due to Frances own failure to digitise the state health system.

The UK and Spain dont need an equivalent of Doctolib because they have succesfully digitised (the health sector), Bizard said. The UK put 3 billion into digitisation a decade ago whereas France invested a mere 150 millonback in 2005.

Frenchdoctors are also reluctant to use the digitaltools offered by the state social security system,Bizard said. They are much more willing to use Doctolib because it offers them assistance to make the technology very easy for them to use.

Doctolibs popularity has soared with doctors as well as patients as a result, withthe number ofhealthcareprofessionals registered on the site quadruplingfrom 75,000 to 300,000 over the past two years.

This article was translated from the original in French.

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Success of online medical portal Doctolib highlights the French states failure to digitise - FRANCE 24 English