The RPPS: France’s MedTech targeting engine in 2026

As of September 25, 2025, the RPPS lists 241,985 physicians, 511,671 nurses, and 75,334 pharmacists practicing in France (source: Agence du Numérique en Santé). Since October 2024 and the decommissioning of the ADELI registry, it covers every healthcare profession, without exception.

The RPPS (Répertoire Partagé des Professionnels de Santé, France’s national registry of healthcare professionals) is the national, public, and exhaustive registry of French healthcare workers. For a MedTech sales team, it isn’t a directory to look up case by case: it’s a targeting engine that segments an entire market by specialty, facility type, and region, where Sales Navigator and Apollo have no data at all.

This article explains what the RPPS contains, why it works as a targeting engine and not just a directory, which cross-references it enables for a MedTech target, how to combine it with other public registries, and where its limits are.

What is the RPPS, and what does it contain?

The RPPS is the reference registry of healthcare professionals, run by the Agence du Numérique en Santé (ANS, France’s digital health agency). It assigns each healthcare worker a unique, permanent 11-digit national identifier that stays with them throughout their career, wherever they move. It brings together identity, profession, qualifications, type of practice, and the contact details of practice locations, fed by the professional licensing boards, the ARS (regional health agencies), and employers.

Until 2021, the RPPS covered only four professions with a licensing board: physicians, dentists, midwives, and pharmacists. Everyone else lived in ADELI, a file kept by each département (French administrative district), whose number changed every time someone moved. The transition was completed in October 2024: speech therapists, orthoptists, osteopaths, chiropractors, psychotherapists, and all allied health professions joined the RPPS, and ADELI was decommissioned.

The result is an authoritative, exhaustive registry. The data is reliable because it comes from the registration authorities, not from voluntary self-reporting. That’s a fundamental difference from a LinkedIn profile filled in by the person themselves.

Why is the RPPS a targeting engine and not just a directory?

The RPPS is a targeting engine because it’s available openly and in bulk. The ANS publishes an extract of the public data on data.gouv.fr, a structured file of nearly 770 MB that you can download manually or automate through a web service. It contains the RPPS identifier, title, professional first and last name, profession, professional category, type of practice, qualifications, and the contact details of practice locations. You don’t look up a record; you segment a population.

That’s exactly what general-purpose outbound tools can’t do. Sales Navigator, Apollo, and ZoomInfo cover LinkedIn and company databases, where French hospital healthcare professionals have a thin, self-reported presence. None of them integrates the RPPS. A sales rep relying on those tools alone is working on the visible subset of the market; one who starts from the RPPS is working on the whole market.

The advantage isn’t access to the data, which is public and free for everyone. The advantage is the expert reading you bring to it: turning a 770 MB file into clean, prioritized prospecting cohorts.

Which cross-references does the RPPS enable for MedTech targeting?

The RPPS enables three decisive cross-references for a MedTech target. Medical specialty crossed with facility type (CHU, or university hospital; private clinic; reference center) isolates a precise cohort. Density by region maps how accessible a product really is before any outreach. Status, private practice or salaried, predicts the buying cycle: a private practitioner signs quickly, while a salaried hospital physician depends on a purchasing committee and a budget approved upstream.

These three axes combine. Targeting private-practice vascular surgeons in a given region, or radiologists working in university hospitals with a specific imaging fleet, becomes a query rather than an investigation. For an orthopedic implant manufacturer looking to source a rare specialty in a given territory, it’s the difference between a list of names bought blind and a cohort built on verified practice criteria.

That’s where Radar does its core work in the healthcare market: converting business criteria (specialty, facility, status, region) into a usable cohort, with no noise and no duplicates. If your market is defined by a medical specialty and a type of facility, this targeting is the first building block of a pipeline, and it’s exactly the kind of case we like to scope in a prospecting scoping call.

How do you combine the RPPS with other public registries?

The RPPS shows its full value when crossed with other public healthcare registries. On its own, it tells you who practices what, and where. Crossed with FINESS (France’s national registry of healthcare facilities), which identifies each facility with a pivot code, it ties the professional to a facility with known characteristics (capacity, authorizations, membership in a GHT, or regional public hospital group). Crossed with BOAMP (France’s official public procurement bulletin), it connects a public buyer to a named medical decision-maker. Crossed with PubMed, it identifies the key opinion leaders active on an indication.

A French MedTech company specializing in medical imaging illustrated this principle: by cross-referencing LinkedIn, ResearchGate, PubMed, and the RPPS, a sourcing agent delivered several thousand qualified radiologists, a volume no LinkedIn extraction alone would have produced, and that no purchased file would have made reliable. The RPPS serves as the identity anchor; the other sources add the buying signal and the context.

That’s the logic of prospecting with public buying signals: not pushing a message to a list, but detecting who has a need and approaching them with the right context. The RPPS is the identity layer of that structure; the buying signals read in a BOAMP tender and the compliance pressure created by certifications from the HAS (France’s National Authority for Health) are its timing layer.

What are the RPPS’s limits for prospecting?

The RPPS has three limits worth knowing. It doesn’t contain direct personal contact details: you’ll find practice locations, not an email address or a mobile number you can use as is. That structural gap is what makes 100% phone coverage impossible without stepping outside the GDPR framework. It describes a professional record, not purchase intent: you have to cross it with a signal registry (BOAMP, ARS, HAS) to know when to reach out, not just who. And since salaried hospital professionals have a thin presence on LinkedIn, the RPPS remains the only reliable source for reaching them, but you then have to rebuild the contact path.

From a regulatory standpoint, consulting this public data is legal, and building a prospecting file falls under legitimate interest as defined by the GDPR (Article 6(1)(f)), provided you respect people’s right to object. That framework is solid for targeted B2B outreach; it doesn’t cover unsolicited mass mailing.

These limits don’t disqualify the RPPS: they define its role. It’s the identity base for targeting, not the timing signal or the contact channel.

Frequently asked questions

Is the RPPS free to access?

Yes. The Agence du Numérique en Santé publishes an open-access extract of the RPPS public data on data.gouv.fr and annuaire.sante.fr. The file can be downloaded at no cost, in a structured, usable format, and downloads can be automated through a web service for regular use.

What’s the difference between the RPPS and ADELI?

The RPPS number is a unique 11-digit national identifier, permanent and unchanged throughout a career, including when someone moves. The ADELI number was département-level and changed with every geographic move. The transition of all ADELI professions to the RPPS was completed in October 2024, and the ADELI registry was decommissioned.

Does the RPPS contain professionals’ personal contact details?

No. The RPPS contains the contact details of practice locations (the facility, the private office), profession, qualifications, and type of practice, but not the professional’s personal email or direct mobile number. To establish a contact channel, you have to cross the RPPS with other sources.

Can you legally use the RPPS for sales prospecting?

Yes, with conditions. The data is public and consulting it is legal. Building a prospecting file from it falls under the legitimate interest basis provided by the GDPR (Article 6(1)(f)), provided you respect people’s right to object and target a relevant B2B use, not unsolicited mass mailing.

Does the RPPS cover salaried hospital professionals?

Yes. Since the ADELI transition was completed in October 2024, the RPPS covers every healthcare profession, including allied health professionals and salaried professionals registered by their employer. That population, barely visible on LinkedIn, is exactly what the RPPS lets you reach exhaustively.

Conclusion

The RPPS isn’t a directory to query; it’s a targeting base to segment. A national, public registry, exhaustive since October 2024 and authoritative because it’s fed by the registration authorities, it turns a healthcare market into cohorts by specialty, facility, and region. It’s the structural blind spot of general-purpose outbound tools, which integrate no data on French healthcare professionals.

Its real power shows up in combination: RPPS for identity, FINESS for the facility, BOAMP and HAS for the timing signal, and PubMed for key opinion leaders. Read across an entire sector, that combination builds a pipeline no purchased list can replicate. If your market is defined by medical specialties and facility types, book a prospecting scoping call to identify the cohorts your current targeting leaves out.

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Agify is an agency specializing in B2B prospecting through public buying signals, with expertise in the French healthcare and public procurement markets. We build targeting setups that cross-reference RPPS, FINESS, BOAMP, HAS, and ARS data to give sales teams the right contact, at the right time, with the right context.