For the use of patient data: Doctolib cooperates with AI research center

The provider Doctolib, known for its online appointment service and repeatedly criticized for its handling of patient data, intends to further develop its systems for artificial intelligence in close cooperation with the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). Doctolib states the goal is to advance methods for the secure and data protection-compliant processing of medical information in AI systems.

The DFKI aims to provide multilingual datasets in German, French, and English to evaluate and further develop models for the pseudonymization of patient data. "The dataset serves Doctolib as a benchmark and supports the further development and testing of pseudonymization techniques and a risk management framework – in line with data protection regulations such as the GDPR," according to Doctolib. Doctolib Germany CEO Nikolay Kolev states that the cooperation is a "central building block" of the company's European AI strategy.

Prof. Dr. Sebastian Möller, head of the DFKI Berlin laboratory, points to the long-standing experience of the DFKI's Speech and Language Technology research area with AI applications in the healthcare sector: "I am pleased that Doctolib is relying on the expertise of DFKI Berlin for the sensitive issues of patient data protection and security." The emphasis on data protection and security also appears to be a reaction to ongoing criticism regarding data privacy.

Read also

Consumer advocates criticize Doctolib and Jameda as "not user-friendly"

Doctolib criticized by data protectionists for years

Data protectionists have long criticized that Doctolib's processing of sensitive health data is too extensive and not transparent enough. Since 2019, complaints about the company have regularly appeared in the activity reports of the Berlin data protection officer – for example, due to ambiguities in data processing. The French data protection authority is responsible as the lead authority.

(mack)