The Doctor Is In — Dr. Booking Startup Snags $20M To Expand

As evidenced by recent legislative battles with it at the focus, the health care industry is often resistant to change for a variety of reasons. The high stress of many industry occupations, as well as the strict regulations over care, can sometimes lead to stasis for innovation.

However, TechCrunch reported that Doctolib, a Paris-based startup and the leading platform for booking doctor appointments in France, announced Tuesday (Oct. 13) that it had secured $20 million in Series B funding to take its brand of medicinal revolution all across Europe. CEO Stanislas Niox-Chateau explained why he thinks both patients and medical professionals alike will flock to Doctolib.

“Our goal is to consolidate our leading position in France and expand to other European countries,” Niox-Chateau said. “We started 18 months ago, and we now have 5,000 doctors using our platform every day in order to manage their bookings. We have around a hundred clinics, and we get 2 million monthly unique visitors. When it comes to traction, we are adding 600 doctors per month, and we plan to double this number in the coming weeks.”

The company claims that Doctolib’s appointment management system can help doctors reduce patient no-show rates from 10 percent to about 2.5 percent. And with a consumer base looking to make more bookings than the restaurant industry, Niox-Chateau explained, the potential for convenience and profit is just waiting to be snatched up.

Doctolib will have to work fast to corner the European market on doctor appointments, though. VentureBeat explained how ZocDoc, a similar New York-based service, and Lybrate, an India-based management system, have both garnered millions and, in ZocDoc’s case, billions of dollars in valuation.

Beating its competitors would be tough enough, but trying to revolutionize an entire industry of medical professionals is the fight Doctolib has chosen. With a fresh round of funding, though, things might not look so daunting.

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