But why does everyone want the big bad Doctolib?

• Online appointment booking, teleconsultation and medical software… Doctolib occupies a central place in the digital sector in France, not without reaping bullying and controversy along the way.

• Its status as a private company in a sector with a public service vocation is not the only object of this mistrust.

• “We must not remove Doctolib, we must regulate it,” argues Frédéric Bizard, president of the Health Institute and economist attached to ESCP.

“Who, today in France, is the pilot in the digital health plane?

», attacks Frédéric Bizard, president of the Health Institute and economist attached to the ESCP.

The answer is clear: Doctolib.

But the French giant of online medical appointment booking is indeed a “for-profit” private company, specifies our expert.

Which raises many questions and opens the door to various cases that have agitated one of the French unicorns since its creation nine years ago.

Why is Doctolib in the eye of the storm?

In five years and a global health crisis, Doctolib has extinguished the competition for online medical appointment booking and is trying to establish itself in the telemedicine and medical software sector.

Not without harm.

Data theft, additional costs during confinement, problem with the encryption of health data, investigation opened for “illegal practice of medicine” in Montpellier after the discovery of two false doctors registered on the platform… The controversies are linked.

The latest relates to the referencing of naturopaths, particularly close to the theories of Thierry Casasnovas and Irène Grosjean, two influential personalities in the field but with discredited positions.

Thread: The #Doctolib platform has been the subject of repeated scandals for several years.

In 2018, the UFML-S highlighted a certain number of them. We then asked that this platform be reserved for health professions.

This is still not the case!

1

— DrMartyUFML-S (@Drmartyufml) August 29, 2022

Access to this content has been blocked to respect your choice of consent

By clicking on "

", you accept the deposit of cookies by external services and will thus have access to the content of our partners

I ACCEPT

And to better remunerate 20 Minutes, do not hesitate to accept all cookies, even for one day only, via our "I accept for today" button in the banner below.

More information on the Cookie Management Policy page.

"Doctolib cannot allow confusion to arise between health professionals and people who are not part of the medical practice", estimated in a press release the Order of Physicians.

The platform references doctors, midwives, dentists, nurses... - regulated health professions -, psychologists and osteopaths - holders of a diploma recognized by the State.

It also allows you to make an appointment with sophrologists, hypnotherapists, naturopaths - professions with practices without regulation, but legal.

They represent 3% of the registrants.

A private actor who manages a sector with a public service vocation

Doctolib, requested by

, did not wish to answer our questions.

His communication is clear on the rigor he says he demonstrates in the selection of professionals present on his platform.

It has also made changes to its referencing and recently deleted 17 profiles of naturopaths.

In January 2021, with our colleagues from

, Stanislas Niox-Château, co-founder of Doctolib, insisted: "Medicine is not a

".

But how then to explain that a private company manages a sector with a public service vocation?

"We must not remove Doctolib, but regulate it", calls Frédéric Bizard.

Indeed, for the expert, if the company is the regular target of attacks, it is because it operates in a system where it is up to the State to intervene.

“On the controversy surrounding naturopaths, the silence of the state is deafening.

Not to mention the Council of the College of Physicians which is at the service of Doctolib.

He should be a driving force and not a spectator”.

However, without a solid institution, a system - especially as sensitive as that of health - cannot self-regulate.

"For a private company to act in the collective interest and deliver a public service, such as waste collection, water distribution or highway management, controls and standards are needed", adds the economist.

A quasi-monopolistic situation

Is there a player responsible for regulation and controls, particularly at Doctolib?

“There would be the CNIL, but it is not the regulatory agency for this health data.

It is the guardian of the GDPR”, explains Frédéric Bizard.

“And the Digital Health Agency (ANS) is a flash in the pan: with a budget of 600 million euros in 2022, it cannot be anything other than a serving hatch”.

In other words, this agency, which benefits from the budgets allocated during the Ségur de la santé, has such a broad field of action that we find no practical data on what sums go to what projects.

It lacks clear definition.

“An additional sign of the complete institutional failure of this sector”, notes the founding president of the Health Agency.

Doctolib, meanwhile, is taking advantage of its quasi-monopolistic situation to expand.

“He weaves his web by choosing telemedicine and medical software as his next objectives”.

Well helped by the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 granted by the State.

“We could have used health insurance.

But we preferred to give Doctolib the ability to become indispensable in the lives of the French, by forcing them to go through the platform to be vaccinated”.

Health data, an increasingly valuable treasure

In the hands of Doctolib were also made available a quantity of health data.

As Yosra Jarraya, co-founder of Astrachain, which creates a technical solution to secure the confidentiality of sensitive data, recalls, health data "is among the most lucrative on the dark web and is particularly important for users because of its sensitivity and of their high confidentiality.

"This essential raw material for the operation of a website, offered free of charge to Doctolib, is an additional reason to plead for regulation", agrees Frédéric Bizard.

Not to mention a possible sale of Stanislas Niox-Chateau's company to one of its foreign investors.

“He has already raised several funds, and as is the case with a majority of French biotechs, what happens if he sells to an American company?

asks the economist.

Because a law of the United States decrees that the data held by an American company belongs to it.

This is also one of the major equations of the Health Data Hub, the megafile of French health data imagined by the government.

"You shouldn't be paranoid, but you have to protect yourself and anticipate," he warns.

Is Doctolib the perfect scapegoat?

If Doctolib is deployed in our German and Italian neighbors, it is especially in France that its situation poses a problem.

“In Europe, no equivalent of Doctolib has the same weight in the healthcare system.

And we have to think about regulation for the future,” Frédéric Bizard insists.

Because its weight and its axes of development are known.

“Seeing the models in other countries, we realize the

of the French system.

Even in the United States, they have not succeeded in uberizing the digital health sector, ”he still annoys.

However, only the platform concentrates criticism and attacks.

“We can blame him for misleading communication, possibly, in terms of ethics.

But once again, the problem is not Doctolib, but the lack of regulation”, repeats Frédéric Bizard.

Doctolib will appreciate… Until the next controversy.

Health

No, the Samu will not go through Doctolib to bring a patient to the emergency room this summer

Health

Is telecare possible for paramedics, an advantage or a risk for patients?

• Doctolib

• Public health

• Digital

• Health

• By the Web