French healthtech startup Synapse Medicine has unveiled today MedGPT, the first conversational medical assistant designed in France and tailored specifically for healthcare professionals. The tool positions itself as a sovereign alternative to American large language models such as ChatGPT, while offering unprecedented guarantees of reliability, security, and regulatory compliance in the healthcare sector. Notably, MedGPT has already beaten ChatGPT in France’s national medical exams.
Built for Practitioners
Unlike general-purpose AI chatbots, MedGPT was designed from the ground up for doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, and other healthcare workers. The system can handle queries ranging from routine questions to complex clinical cases, providing clear, evidence-based answers updated in real time. It supports daily practice by offering assistance with diagnosis, personalized therapeutic recommendations, appropriate additional exams, and guidance on the most relevant care pathways.
In a press release, Dr. Clément Goehrs, co-founder and CEO of Synapse Medicine said:
“Unlike general-purpose AI, MedGPT leverages a dual expertise in medicine and artificial intelligence and relies exclusively on validated sources tailored to the French context,”
Outperforming ChatGPT in Medical Exams
Synapse Medicine openly compares its solution to OpenAI’s ChatGPT – and with reason. MedGPT outperformed ChatGPT by seven points at the 2023 Épreuves Classantes Nationales (ECN), the reference examination at the end of medical studies in France.
This result highlights MedGPT’s mastery of French medical standards and its ability to minimize the errors and approximations that often plague generalist AI models.
Meeting a Growing Demand
While American and British doctors have already embraced ChatGPT in large numbers (66% of U.S. physicians and 20% of British general practitioners, according to recent surveys), French practitioners have been caught in a dilemma: adopt tools not adapted to local practice, or forgo AI altogether. MedGPT aims to resolve this paradox by delivering a trustworthy and context-specific assistant.
“Our 150,000 users know they can rely on us for medical accuracy. Today, we are applying that same rigor to conversational AI,” says Louis Létinier, Synapse Medicine’s co-founder and Chief Medical Officer.
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Data Sovereignty and Security
Beyond performance, MedGPT emphasizes data sovereignty – a critical issue in Europe’s healthcare ecosystem. The platform’s infrastructure is hosted in France, and its knowledge base draws from French and European sources such as the HAS (Haute Autorité de Santé), EMA (European Medicines Agency), and the Thériaque drug database, already used by over 150,000 healthcare professionals.
Its architecture builds on CE Class IIB-certified software components, ensuring full traceability and compliance with EU medical regulations.
“We control the entire technological chain, from medical data to the AI model. This independence is what allows us to guarantee maximum security,” explains Synapse’s CTO and co-founder Alicia Bel-Létoile.
Sovereignty is fast becoming a critical issue for European organizations. French players, in particular, are capitalizing on this trend — with MistralAI leading the charge.
Often portrayed (sometimes wrongly) as a rival to American giants such as OpenAI or Anthropic, MistralAI’s real strength today lies in its positioning as a strategic partner for European organizations and large corporations. Rather than competing head-on in the consumer AI race, the Paris-based startup focuses on building customized, sovereign systems that address the specific needs of enterprises seeking to retain control over their data, infrastructure, and intellectual property.
This approach resonates strongly in Europe, where data sovereignty and regulatory compliance (such as the EU AI Act) are shaping the way businesses adopt artificial intelligence. This is especially true in the medical sector, where data sensitivity is important. Instead of relying on opaque, U.S.-based proprietary models, European companies are increasingly turning to open-weight models and localized solutions.
A New Chapter for Synapse Medicine
Founded in 2017 by two physicians and a computer engineer, Synapse Medicine is already a recognized player in digital health. The company has developed six CE Class IIB medical devices, a HAS-certified prescription support tool, and built over 300 partnerships with hospitals across France. With MedGPT, Synapse is entering a new phase, bringing safe, sovereign AI directly into the hands of healthcare professionals.
MedGPT is now available in beta in French for French healthcare professionals and medical students via www.medgpt.fr.
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