Alan partners with Kry’s Livi for telemedicine appointments

French startup Alan is expanding beyond health insurance by offering telemedicine appointments directly from Alan. The company is partnering with Livi, Kry’s French subsidiary.

While a handful of European countries already let you talk to a doctor using video calls, France’s national health system just started allowing remote appointments.

If you need to renew your prescription or your doctor already knows you quite well, chances are you don’t need to see your doctor in person every single time. With remote appointements, you can save time and talk to a doctor more quickly. This is particularly useful if you live in the countryside.

Kry is already a well-known startup when it comes to telehealth. The company raised a $66 million Series B round back in July and operates in three countries — Sweden, Norway and Spain. Kry is building its own team of practitioners that you can find on the platform. The company created a new brand for the French market and started operating a few weeks ago.

Alan customers will be able to talk to a doctor on Livi and get reimbursed by the national health system and Alan (Update: Alan reimburses everything). Ideally, you’ll be able to talk to a doctor within a few minutes between 7 AM and 11 PM.

So Alan isn’t going to handle remote appointments directly, but the startup is going to make it as easy as possible to talk to a doctor.

French startup Doctolib is leveraging its own community of practitioners to compete with Livi and other newcomers. In a couple of months, Doctolib users will also be able to book a remote appointment on Doctolib.

Those are two different approaches — an integrated user experience compared to a marketplace. Both provide advantages and disadvantages. But it’s good to see that Alan is on top of recent regulatory changes to improve the user experience.