Thanks to its fifty million users, Doctolib is seeking to develop its application offering with a new functionality that is causing concern.
On November 20, Doctolib announced the deployment of a new “Health” tab which allows you to store all of your health data, in particular your allergies, treatments or vaccinations. The objective is then to be able to quickly share them with a partner doctor. A function which takes up the idea of the “My health space” system, which has the gift of annoying Health Insurance, which sees an “ambiguity” between the two services, one public, the other commercial.
In an investigation published in Le Monde, the different actors concerned are opposed. Doctolib denies wanting to “privatize” health data or imagining “another digital safe”, as we already have one on My health space.
Health Insurance calls for “clarification”
But for Health Insurance, this system is duplicative: “We have always considered it useful, relevant and even necessary that private and public actors be involved in the same roadmap on digital health, and this is what is happening, which is very positive, but the reference place for hosting health data is the public service,” says Thomas Fatôme, the head of the organization in Le Monde.
He specifies that he is waiting for a “clarification” from Doctolib, while a forum has started to circulate among health professionals against the platform. Among the signatories, healthcare unions and patient associations, who point out a potential “privatization” of essential health data.
Problem: according to information from Le Monde, the forum was launched by the digital health delegation (DNS), which comes from the Ministry of Health. Which, again, irritated the professionals: “Being contacted by our central administration who told us that she had written an article and that she would be delighted if we signed it… it's quite incredible,” exclaims Franck Devulder, boss of the Confederation of French Medical Unions, to the evening daily. The newspaper also indicated that it had been asked to publish the column.
Doctolib “shocked”
As a result, the column should ultimately not appear, especially since Geneviève Darrieussecq, the Minister of Health, was not informed.
The forum “shocked” Doctolib, especially since it comes from their supervisory authority: “How can the DNS (…) make such accusations?” asks Stanislas Niox-Chateau, the boss of the French company, of which the State is also a shareholder.
Questioned by the evening daily, the Ministry of Health invokes its “duty of neutrality” and ensures that it is “vigilant”, in particular so that the regulatory framework “is well respected”.
