New carte Vitale app setup is frustrating

To the Editor,

I am writing to relay my frustrating experience with trying to set up the new carte Vitale app using my (Article 50) titre de sejour, after reading on November 19 (Connexion) that this is now possible. Spoiler: It was not good! 

I found the app's requirement to turn on my iPhone's microphone weird. In this day and age of AI and scammers, I think people will be justifiably wary of doing this. There may be a good technical reason for needing microphone access, but if so it should be explained clearly in advance, and I imagine some people will abandon the process right there due to lack of trust. 

I verified that I was using the official app and continued, authorising microphone access. At this point, I had a lot of trouble maintaining a connection to the service - it must have failed five or six times despite good WiFi. I also tried 5G, without much improvement. 

Finally, I arrived at the part where I had to take a video of my titre de sejour. This was also incredibly frustrating - and because the microphone was on (see above), someone somewhere may be treated to some choice Anglo swearing. 

I aligned the card in the requested area on the app as directed, but could see that the image was blurry - there was nothing I could do to improve the focus. Eventually I got videos of the front and back of the card, but unsurprisingly, received a message that the data was illegible. I tried several more times, and got satisfactory videos of the card and of my face. 

After these were processed by the app, I got a message that my état civil on the card does not match the information held by CPAM and I should contact them. This may be because my Brexit titre de sejour has 'ep. *INC' after my last name, something to do with married versus birth name that I have never understood or investigated, and which has on occasion led to 'INC' being listed as my last name. 

I am not inclined to spend valuable time investigating further, so will be sticking with my physical carte Vitale for the foreseeable future. 

I love the French healthcare system and am grateful to be part of it, but if you are planning to use your titre de sejour with the app, I would recommend waiting for future improvements.

P.S., by email