The goal of this article. Follow the actual journey of a typical appointment. Where the information you give goes, who sees it, how long it stays, and when it becomes your best ally or your worst risk.
Stage 1 — The doctor's practice
Your doctor enters their observations in their medical software (the EMR, Electronic Medical Record). In France, the most common tools are WEDA, Doctolib Pro, Axisanté, HelloDoc, Maiia. Each has its own architecture, hosting, and terms.
What is recorded: reason for consultation, clinical observations, history gathered verbally, prescriptions, billing codes (NGAP/CCAM coding), vitals (BP, weight, height).
How long: the French Public Health Code (article R. 1112-7) requires a minimum 20 years of retention for medical records. Some tools keep data longer by default, without your being informed.
Stage 2 — Transmission to the social security system
As soon as your doctor validates the Electronic Care Sheet (FSE), the procedures performed are transmitted to your health insurance fund via the SESAM-Vitale network. This enables your reimbursement.
What flows: not your clinical observations, but the procedure codes (general consultation, blood draw, etc.) and their cost. So your health insurance fund knows you consulted, for how much, but not why.
Important exception. Long-term conditions (ALD) involve a detailed care protocol shared between your doctor, the health insurance medical adviser and you. The diagnosis is written there in plain text.
Stage 3 — To your supplementary insurer
If you have direct billing, your supplementary insurer automatically receives procedure data to complete the reimbursement. Under Decree 2015-267, the information transmitted is limited to what is strictly necessary for reimbursement: amount, nature of the procedure, but not the diagnosis.
Blind spot. If you declare an illness (ALD) or if you take out a specific guarantee (heavy dental, optical, hospitalisation), your supplementary insurer may request more detailed supporting documents. It is at that point that precise medical data can flow.
Stage 4 — The prescription at the pharmacy
Your prescription goes (on paper or digitally) to the pharmacy. The pharmacist records it in their pharmacy management software. The dispensing is recorded in your Pharmaceutical Record (DP), a national 4-month history (21 years for vaccines and biological drugs) managed by the Order of Pharmacists.
Who can view it: any pharmacist in any pharmacy in France. Your primary care physician too, with your consent. You can view it yourself via Mon Dossier Pharmaceutique on Mon Espace Santé.
Stage 5 — Tests at the laboratory
If you've been prescribed a blood test, the lab receives the prescription, performs the tests, and sends the results. The major groups (Cerballiance, Biogroup, Eurofins) often use Dedalus's mesanalyses.fr platform, which aggregates hundreds of labs.
Recipients: you, your prescribing doctor (via MSSanté), and your DMP/Mon Espace Santé (automatic feeding since 2022). The laboratory keeps the tests for 20 years.
Stage 6 — DMP / Mon Espace Santé
If your doctor and the facilities feed correctly, your Mon Espace Santé automatically receives: reports, lab results, prescriptions, vaccinations. It's the only place where you, the patient, can see everything from your phone.
Real-world limit. Many facilities still do not systematically feed in. Ségur Wave 2 (deadline 14 October 2026) makes this mandatory for vendors, but adoption on the practitioner side remains uneven.
Stage 7 — The "invisible" destinations
Some medical software integrates commercial pharmaceutical databases (Vidal, published by a vendor specialising in pharma marketing studies). Some product terms authorise aggregated or anonymised exploitation of prescriptions.
Some French platforms host on AWS (Amazon Web Services) or Microsoft Azure. Their data, even encrypted, falls under the US Cloud Act, which allows a US prosecutor to compel access. Dedicated article.
Connected health devices (scales, watches, glucose meters) send their data to their vendor (Apple Health, Google Fit, Withings, Garmin...). The level of protection varies enormously by vendor.
The summary table
- Doctor's practice: 20 years minimum, vendor's software
- Social security: procedures and costs, not the diagnosis
- Supplementary insurer: procedures and costs, diagnosis possible for certain guarantees
- Pharmacy / DP: 4 months, national, accessible to any pharmacist
- Laboratory: 20 years, accessible to the prescribing doctor
- Mon Espace Santé: accessible to you, and to professionals you authorise
- Commercial pharma databases: aggregation sometimes possible under your doctor's software terms
How to take back control
- Activate your Mon Espace Santé — at monespacesante.fr. You will see what actually arrives there.
- Ask your doctor which software vendor they use — if they use a tool that exploits your prescriptions for pharma marketing, you have the right to know.
- Exercise your GDPR rights — article 15, access to data held by your supplementary insurer, your insurance fund, your labs. How-to guide.
- Use a partner application — a sovereign health passport like MDMC aggregates all this with client-side end-to-end encryption and full portability.
Key takeaway
Your data after an appointment does not travel through a single system. It disperses across at least 6 different systems, each with its own rules, durations, and hosts. GDPR compliance exists on paper for each, but the blind spot lies in aggregation: nobody sees the whole picture, except you — if you take the time.
This is exactly the impasse that Mon Espace Santé tries to resolve on the public side, and that a partner application like My Data My Care completes with universal aggregation, stronger encryption and cross-border portability.