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The French competition authority has issued a more than €4.6 million fine against health tech company Doctolib for “abusing its dominant position” in the telehealth and online medical appointment booking sectors.
Doctolib is one of French tech’s shining stars, with annual revenues hitting a reported €348 million last year and operations across France, Italy, and Germany.
The Autorité de la Concurrence said in a statementthat Doctolib “deliberately implemented several anticompetitive practices … as part of an overall, structured, and coherent anticompetitive strategy”.
At the heart of the case are two of the company’s digital services, Doctolib Patient and Doctolib Téléconsultation, which allow patients to book medical appointments online and speak directly to medical professionals through the app.
The Autorité says that Doctolib forces professional subscribers into exclusivity clauses and does not allow them to subscribe separately to the two services, stomping out any potential competition in these two major telehealth sectors.
“Numerous internal documents corroborate that Doctolib wanted to impose exclusivity on healthcare professionals, with management declaring that Doctolib should become ‘an essential, strategic interface between doctor and patient, in order to lock in both parties,’” the Autorité said.
It also called out Doctolib’s 2018 acquisition of its main competitor, MonDocteur, when the telehealth market was still in its early stages.
The case stems from a 2019 complaint by Cegedim Santé, one of Doctolib’s competitors in France.
Doctolib said in a statement it will appeal the decision, and that the company “is in no way in a dominant position”.
“Despite our widespread use by the public, Doctolib is a recent player in providing software for healthcare professionals,” the company said.
Doctolib said it is three times smaller than European competitors and that it is used by 30 per cent of French health workers, up from 10 per cent in 2019.
“We are confident and are calmly beginning the next steps of the procedure, which will allow us to obtain a fair decision upon appeal,” the company said.