Doctolib is celebrating its 10th anniversary but will still have to wait a little longer before making money. The champion of online medical appointments “plans to be profitable at the start of 2025”, indicates its co-founder and president Stanislas Niox-Chateau in an interview to be published in Ouest-France Sunday.
“It was planned earlier, but the developments made for Covid cost us without benefiting us, which delayed our profitability by two years,” explains Stanislas Niox-Chateau. Doctolib, which has 2,800 employees, today claims the clientele of around half of French private doctors, and a third of public hospitals.
Secure messaging expected at the end of November
The group, also present in the highly competitive medical software niches, intends to continue to develop in digital tools for health. Doctolib will notably launch “on November 23” secure messaging allowing communication between patients and their caregivers, specifies Stanislas Niox-Chateau.
Doctolib also plans to launch “assistants using artificial intelligence” for caregivers. For example, this will involve helping them “to take notes during their consultation (…) to prepare their treatment plan and to access medical knowledge more easily”.
No competition with the State
However, Doctolib will not enter into competition with the State and its Digital Health Agency, which has notably developed Mon Espace Santé, the digital health record, affirms its president. “The State’s responsibility is to provide all the infrastructure (Carte Vitale, security, interoperability, etc.), which allows caregivers and entrepreneurs to innovate. It is not the responsibility of the State to create services like ours,” according to him. The State already offers secure patient-caregiver messaging on My Health Space.