Carte Vitale: Plans for digital version to be integrated with French ID app

France’s healthcare cards (cartes Vitale) will be available via the France Identité app in the first quarter of 2025, under new plans outlined by prime minister Michel Barnier, reports Le Parisien. 

This will widen the digitisation of the cards, which is currently only available to people in around a quarter of French departments where a smartphone app for cartes Vitales is on trial.

Such a move will allow cardholders access to the document through their smartphone – useful if they forget the card when going to a medical appointment – and potentially keep a digital access of health records and payments, as the carte Vitale app currently allows.

An official digital version of the card will confer the same rights as the physical card. 

As with other documents digitised via the app, physical copies of the document will not disappear or become unusable. 

Certain French documents such as electronic national identity cards and driving licences are already available in official digitised versions through the France Identité app. 

Digitisation of French documents 

Various plans to speed up digitisation of the carte Vitale have been proposed in recent years, including combining it with identity cards. 

Other options included modernising the cards and including biometric information, however this would have come at a significant cost to the government – around €250 million per year – at a time when it is trying to tighten its belt. 

The plans may help with Mr Barnier’s plans to crackdown on healthcare fraud, although as Capital reports, the majority of this comes from healthcare professionals overcharging, and relatively little from carte Vitale holders committing offences via their use of the card. 

Currently, people in 23 departments with a French passport or residency permit can access a digital version of their carte Vitale through an Ameli (online healthcare space) app on their smartphones. 

The app, however, is still under trial and not available everywhere, and some users say they have difficulties using it, including a member of The Connexion team.

Read more: Digital carte Vitale begins in many areas: where and how will it work?

When using the digital version of the card, you will be able to scan it via the France Identité app on your smartphone when paying for medical services as you would a physical card, provided the payment methods used by the office are equipped with NFC scanners (most modern card readers have this technology). 

To set up the digitised version of the carte Vitale when the scheme launches, you will need to access the app using a piece of ID (French passport or ID card, or residency permit), as well as the information on your carte Vitale (or your social security number).

You will also need to set up a four-digit code, which will be required at medical appointments where you use the digital version of the card. 

Previous governments have announced plans to digitise residency permits through the app, however as of October 2024 no further news has been given. 

Read more: Can residency cards be uploaded to French ID smartphone app?