Having become extremely famous at the time of Covid, Doctolib has great ambitions for 2025, including that of becoming a hub for all your health data. Enough to make health insurance cringe.
Who do you want to trust with your health data? During an interview with the newspaper West France On November 20, the boss of Doctolib, Stanislas Niox-Chateau, implicitly asked this delicate question.
In fact, the famous medical appointment booking application has recently welcomed a new tab “ Health» which should help patients to “ gather all their health information, their history, their treatments, their allergies, their vaccination record »
“Competition” in public service?
The goal of this new service launched by Doctolib is to easily share this data with caregivers, to receive “personalized prevention reminders » and, more generally, to become the nerve center of your medical life to help users “take care of themselves and their loved ones ».
Except that Doctolib's ambitions have been somewhat offended in high places. As the newspaper notesThe Worldthe ambitions of this brand new “Health” tab in fact largely resemble that of the “shared medical record” that Health Insurance has been trying to push since at least 2022. This platform, managed by the public service, already has more than 15 million users and allows “to keep and share your health data and documents in complete confidentiality», Promises the site.
Fearing that the tool proposed by Doctolib would be duplicated, the head of Health Insurance questioned byThe Worldsees in the ambitions of the private health site a “concurrence» or at least a “real ambiguity» who deserves «clarification», specifies the evening daily. Stanislas Niox-Chateau, for his part, denies this, explaining that “the objective of “Health” is really to make patients more independent» where «My Health Space is a digital safe and health record ».
“Clarifications” requested
To prove its good faith, Doctolib even explains “participate[r] actively developing Mon Espace santé since its launch» with software for caregivers who are directly connected to it. This did not prevent the Digital Health Department from launching an abortive offensive against Doctolib, claiming that this new functionality was akin to a “privatisation» of the health record with all the risks of “financialization of our health system» that go with it.
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At a time when Doctolib has already created a semi-panic with its general conditions of use which now allow AI to train with health data, it indeed seems relevant to clarify these questions.
