Emmanuel Macron confirmed on Friday the launch of the vast project on digital health “
Paris Santé Campus
”, a public-private center which wants to make France the “
world leader
” in this key sector and which will be installed in the former Val-de-Grâce hospital.
Read also: The Covid-19, accelerator of digital transformation in health
During a visit to the Imagine University Hospital Institute at Necker Hospital, the Head of State presented this project, alongside ministers Olivier Véran (Health) and Frédérique Vidal (Research).
It will initially be endowed with 400 million euros.
It will structure a digital health research sector, including artificial intelligence, in a unique place that will promote interdisciplinary meetings, “
around the coffee machine
”.
Grouping of structures
Installed initially in a temporary location, it will bring together specialists from many public and private structures: Inserm, CNRS, AP-HP, Digital Agency of the Ministry of Health, Paris Sciences et Lettres, INRIA, Health Data Hub, Sanofi, Dassault System, France Biotech and start-ups, among others.
The campus will bring together training and research activities and will serve as an incubator for start-ups.
Its work should focus in particular on bio-productions, such as gene therapies and new RNA vaccines, currently at the forefront of the fight against Covid-19.
It will also be an asset to try to regain sovereignty in the field of data, hoped the head of state.
Example of the key role of digital technology in health, explained Gilles Bloch, President of Inserm, “
an artificial intelligence from Google made a major breakthrough in fundamental biology last week, allowing to go from the primary sequence, it that is, the linking of nucleic acids in a protein, to function.
AI has solved a mystery that all biologists have had before them for 50 years.
But an AI from Google, unfortunately
”.
“
Having more digital technology at our disposal in this place will be a tremendous boost to accelerate the dissemination of this technology.
This will allow us to make important discoveries in infectious, mental or chronic diseases,
”he enthusiastically.
"
But we have less than 5 years to take a serious stand because otherwise we will have lost the data, it will be too late
", warned Bernard Charles, CEO of Dassault Systèmes, a world leader in healthcare software, calling for his wishes a European platform.
"
I sound the alarm signal on the slowness of these decisions,
" he added.
For him, "
it is not acceptable that it is the American platforms which are used for sovereign data
".
Emmanuel Macron, however, did not mention the creation of a new research agency on infectious diseases, which should see the light of day in January 2021, a decision "
confirmed
" according to the Elysee.
Hosted in Inserm premises, it will bring together the National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis (ANRS) and the REACting consortium, which coordinates research on health crises linked to emerging infectious diseases (chikungunya virus, Ebola , Covid-19 ...).
"
To be better armed in the face of the possible emergence of another epidemic (...), we need more rapid intervention and reaction methods
", Gilles Bloch explained to AFP.
This new agency, whose name has not yet been chosen, will have the role of defining research priorities, initiating and financing projects and setting up new tools (sample banks, patient cohorts) "
which allow us to do even better research
, ”he added.
