Digital carte Vitale application now available in many French departments
Application is available in half of mainland French departments and can be used by foreign residents
The app should be available to all people in France by the end of 2025
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The number of people who can access a digital version of their ‘carte Vitale’ French health card – including non-citizens – has roughly doubled following an expansion to departments where the relevant smartphone application can be downloaded.
The application is available in 23 new departments – 46 overall across six regions – including in areas of Normandy, the Grand Est, and Pays de la Loire (a full list is given at the end of this article).
It comes after the application was trialled in the Île-de-France, Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regions from June 2024. An earlier trial took place in eight departments in 2023.
It provides a digitised version of the card that can be used at appointments in place of the physical plastic cards – the digital version is scanned through the phone – as well as show information about recent appointments.
However, it cannot always be used as a form of ID as the physical card can.
The app is reportedly set to be rolled out to all departments by autumn 2025, however is not intended to replace the physical version of the card but merely accompany it.
Instructions on how to download the app are available in our article here. At the end of April, around one million people had downloaded it according to tech website iGen.
Less restrictive than France Identité
The government announced that a digital version of the carte Vitale was available through the France Identité application in March, available to people in all departments.
However this is currently only available to French citizens who have a modern plastic credit-card style national identity card, leaving millions in the country unable to access it.
French citizens who have an older-style national ID card can ask for a free updated replacement, citing a desire to use it for France Identité and other digital authentication purposes.
There are plans to widen the eligibility criteria for France Identité to include residency card holders, but this is yet to take place.
Foreign residents who have a carte Vitale but cannot currently use France Identité can use the carte Vitale application, as they only need to add information such as their social security number and scan their health card to set up the digitised version.
Assurance Maladie lists the departments where the application can now be used:
