Doctolib has been working with Tanker since 2019 to encrypt its users’ health data end-to-end. The French unicorn has decided to go further in its collaboration with the start-up by buying it out.
Faced with the inexorable rise of cyberattacks, protecting medical data has never been more critical than today, as the Covid-19 pandemic plays out. Doctolib is well placed to find out, the platform having become essential for being tested and vaccinated since the start of the health crisis. To secure the information passing through its services, the spearhead of French Tech in e-health has announced the acquisition of the start-up Tanker, which specializes in end-to-end encryption. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Founded in 2015 by Cédric Gestes, Clément Ravouna and Guillaume Pontallier, Tanker has been working with Doctolib since 2019 to encrypt the health data of its users from end to end. “The acquisition of Tanker is the logical and natural evolution of our relationship and we can be proud that such technology remains in Europe, while the world’s technology leaders had it on their radar”, says Stanislas Niox-Chateau, co-founder and president of Doctolib.
Among its investors, Tanker counts Kima Ventures, Xavier Niel’s fund, and Idinvest Partners. The young shoot is also collaborating with another nugget of French Tech, namely Alan, who should be a collateral victim of this merger, barring a huge surprise. Especially since with 60 million patients and 300 healthcare professionals who use its services in France, Germany and Italy, the French unicorn headed by Stanislas Niox-Chateau already offers a substantial playing field to the start-up it is preparing to welcome into its bosom.
300 million euros of investments in 2022
With Tanker, Doctolib adds a string to its bow in terms of cybersecurity, while the group has experienced some scares in the past. In the summer of 2020, the platform was the victim of a data leak concerning several thousand medical appointments. But according to her, the health data had not been consulted. More recently, a survey of France Inter had ensured that the encryption of the data passing through the platform was incomplete, which would allow Amazon Web Services (AWS), the host selected by Doctolib, to have access to this data. A few days later, the Council of State had finally cleared the tricolor unicorn, considering that the data security mechanism was sufficient within the framework of the RGPD and that an encryption procedure based on Atos prevented a third party, and therefore AWS, to access this data.
It is therefore to avoid such pitfalls that Doctolib, which has more than 2,300 employees, is continuing its policy of investing in data security. The company notably indicated that it had doubled the size of its team of cybersecurity experts in 2021. At the start of the year, the takeover of Tanker therefore reinforces the company’s approach in this direction, while it has announced plans to invest 300 million euros in 2022 to improve existing solutions and develop new services for patients and healthcare professionals. Doctolib plans in particular to launch Doctolib Team, a secure and encrypted messaging service intended to facilitate the coordination of care between healthcare professionals. In addition, the company wants to go from 2 million dematerialized medical prescriptions each month via its platform to 6 million by the end of the year.