Announced in its 2020 - 2022 report on the application of the benefits framework, in which it warned of the ethical risks associated with the activity of physician influencers, the Conseil national de l'ordre des médecins ("CNOM") has just published, on January 16, 2025, the charter for responsible content creators.

The CNOM's aim is to provide a framework for medical information, to make it more rigorous and accessible, and to encourage the deployment of reliable content.

Publication of a charter for content-creating physicians

The result of collaboration with doctors who create content (also known as influencers) on social networks and the Internet, as well as with experts from the YouTube platform, this charter, entitled "The 10 principles of responsible content creation by doctors", contains 10 principles designed to reiterate the ethical and deontological framework applicable to doctors, while adapting to content creation practices on social networks.

It is intended to apply to all doctors who create content, whatever the medium, and sets out a number of obligations for them.

The 10 principles of the responsible content doctor

From now on, doctors who create content must :

• Share information on social networks and platforms that corresponds to one of the three types of content mentioned in the charter, i.e. :
  • Educational content for colleagues, students and other healthcare professionals,
  • Popularized medical and scientific content to raise awareness and inform the general public,
  • Any other content related to health issues.

• Update dated content with "explicit and detailed" sources;
• Mention partnerships ;
• Use the title "doctor" in their pseudonym only if they have this title and inform the Order of this activity;
• Exercise caution in the content they publish and moderate their comments and interactions with other users;
• Use all the means provided by platforms and social networks to identify themselves as doctors, indicate their recognized medical qualifications or qualify content as "health content".

Prohibited practices

• In addition, the charter condemns several practices, so content-creating doctors are prohibited from :
  • Provide personalized medical advice to users;
  • Promote or encourage practices or therapies that have not been scientifically validated;
  • Self-promotion, whether for their own business or for commercial purposes;
  • Use pay-per-click tools to improve the ranking of their content;
  • Commercial promotion of any healthcare product, drug or medical device.

‍

This charter is reminiscent of the provisions of Law no. 2023-451 of June 9, 2023 aimed at regulating commercial influence and combating the abuses of influencers on social networks, which regulates the activities of influencers. On this point, see the article: What are the new rules applicable to health-related influencers?

The aim of all these principles is to ensure that the information disseminated by content-creating physicians is reliable, ethical and compliant with the deontological framework.

‍