Doctolib stands out as the champion of online medical appointments

Paris – The platform for online medical appointments Doctolib announced Thursday that it has bought its main competitor, MonDocteur, establishing itself as a champion in a growing niche.
  

The new ensemble will be present in 55,000 practitioners, about 10% of the 550,000 French professionals in the medical sector that Doctolib considers as its potential market.

Doctolib (450 employees) and MonDocteur (150 employees) were both born in 2013, but the first had taken the ascendancy, with 45,000 practitioners today in his list, against 10,000 at MonDocteur.

With 20 million patient visits per month, the new ensemble now claims to be the number one online dating platform in the world, ahead of the US group ZocDoc or the Indian group Practo, and far ahead his other French rivals, such as Yellow Pages, Keldoc, or RDVmédicaux (Vivendi).

Doctolib and MonDocteur aspire to " build a society of several thousand people united around humanistic values ​​", said in a statement Stanislas Niox-Chateau, president and co-founder of Doctolib.

The brand MonDocteur will remain at first, but " the goal is to have a single more comprehensive service under the brand Doctolib ," said AFP Julien Méraud, director of the strategy of the company.

Doctolib hopes to keep the entire workforce of MonDocteur after the merger, to satisfy an accelerating growth market.

Doctolib claims 2,500 additional practitioners per month, a monthly increase of more than 5%.

The company has also started to internationalize by gaining foothold in the German market, where it boasts 2,000 practitioners today and a monthly growth of 10%.

Doctolib plans to employ 1,000 employees by 2020, including around 250 engineers at its research and development centers in Paris and Berlin.

" The new group will continue its developments in two directions, create more human, efficient and connected future cabinets and hospitals of the future ", and " improve the care pathway of patients ", according to Doctolib.

The company thus badesses the potentialities of teleconsultation, according to Julien Méraud, who states that the reflection is still ongoing.

– No Data Exploitation –

Doctolib is also interested in the possibilities of facilitating patient access to their health data – history of visits, prescriptions, reimbursements …-, contained in the shared medical file (DMP) being set up by the health insurance.

No question for Doctolib to access itself to the data, said Julien Méraud: " The data do not belong to us, they are the property of patients and doctors ".

" We have no revenue from advertising and data resale, and we will never have any ," he said.

The amount of the transaction was not disclosed, but Doctolib had significant liquidity, having raised 35 million euros in November 2017 after 26 million euros in January of the same year.

Doctolib is an independent company, controlled by its founders and management team who have remained in the majority after successive fundraising events.

Eurazeo and Bpifrance in particular also appear in the capital, with specialists in the digital economy such as the international venture capital fund Accel, or entrepreneurs such as Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, co-founder of the online commerce site PriceMinister, and Nicolas Brusson, co-founder of the French start-up carpool BlaBlaCar.

The Doctolib service works by subscription, at a monthly price of 109 euros including tax.

The company promises practitioners who use its service a reduction of 30% of their secretarial time. It also highlights a reduction of 75% in the rate of non-presentation of patients, thanks to SMS reminder appointments sent automatically.