Joint Inria/AP-HP laboratory: experimenting and transferring digital innovations to medicine and healthcare

Stimulating the transfer of digital technologies

On 17 November 2020, Inria signed a scientific collaboration framework agreement with Public Assistance - Paris Hospitals (AP-HP), the European leader in clinical trials and the top university hospital in Europe. Signed for a period of five years, it provides in particular for the creation of a joint laboratory dedicated to digital science and technology in the healthcare field.

Dominique Chapelle, a Senior Researcher at the Inria Saclay-Ile de France Centre, will be entrusted with the scientific leadership of the joint laboratory. Among other things, his role will involve the scientific management and coordination of the laboratory’s projects. Assisted by an operations manager, he will also facilitate connections between the two establishments, encourage exchanges with other experts and promote the research’s visibility in the scientific field.

“Digital science in general offers benefits to the medical community” says Dominique Chapelle. “For example, mathematical modelling in the field of biomechanics, such as algorithms for medical imaging analysis, can help develop methods, models or systems that can be of use in the diagnosis or treatment of illnesses (in cardiology, pulmonology etc.)”. The laboratory’s projects will facilitate the evaluation of innovations and their transfer to the economic world among industrial partners or through the creation of startups.

Driving collaboration

The creation of the laboratory reinforces the collaboration that has existed for several years between the teams of both establishments. Since 2016, Inria has been part of AP-HP's "postes d’accueil" (host positions) scheme, allowing hospital professionals to join an Inria project team. This enables them to carry out full- or part-time research in a wide variety of disciplines such as neurology, radiology, hepatobiliary surgery, anaesthesia and intensive care.

“The joint laboratory will accelerate this freedom of movement, currently also facilitated by two research chairs created this year by AP-HP, Inria and CentraleSupelec” says Elisa Salamanca, Head of the innovation and data section in the computer science department at AP-HP. The laboratory will stimulate collaborative research and facilitate transfer to the hospital environment, for biology or imaging for example, and to AP-HP’s information systems, in particular its "health data warehouse” (EDS AP-HP*).

Facilitating exchanges between experts

The laboratory's management bodies will be structured in 2021 and its first major research projects launched. The collaboration will also take the form of the provision of professionals from both AP-HP and Inria, the creation of joint project teams, new research chairs etc.

Operating in an interdisciplinary framework, the laboratory will bring together scientists usually working in different communities and provide the opportunity for more direct exchanges. An accelerator for the dissemination of knowledge, it will allow them to work within a framework that benefits all.

“In addition to the concrete results expected at the end of the joint research projects, we are sure that the laboratory will improve the skills of clinician-researchers at AP-HP in the field of algorithms, and those of the Inria researchers in healthcare” concludes Dominique Chapelle.

*EDS AP-HP currently contains the healthcare data of approximately 13 million patients admitted to AP-HP. The first big data platform set up within a French healthcare establishment, it was authorized by the CNIL in January 2017 and has been governed in accordance with the recommendations issued by the CCNE since May 2019.

“Digital science in general is a source of numerous potential innovations that will ultimately be useful in doctors’ daily work. In particular, algorithms for processing data, whether in the form of signals or images, as well as biological analysis or diagnostics (texts) reports, will allow the development of diagnostics aid systems that will be able to accurately anticipate the occurrence of diseases for example. Other techniques, such as mathematical optimisation, will also improve hospital business management. It all seems feasible within the scope of algorithms today, but we need a realistic roadmap. The research carried out in the joint Inria - AP-HP laboratory will aim to evaluate the possibilities offered by digital science and show how they can meet the needs of a healthcare institution and facilitate the transfer of the most relevant solutions among them.”

• Le projet « Entrepôt de données de santé – imagerie » à l'AP-HP » – Intervention en vidéo de Raphaël  Beaufret, directeur du département Web innovations données à l’Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris, Collège de France, 2 mai 2018
• Digitaliser le « parcours patient » dans l’hôpital de demain – Hospitalia, 14 mai 2018
• Table ronde « Médecine personnalisée et Big Data » avec Dominique Chapelle (Inria), Marie-Christine Jaulent (Inserm) et Pierre Tambourin (Genopole) -  Inria Channel, YouTube, 12 janvier 2017