Evry-Courcouronnes, 5 December 2024
During an event held at the Palais des congrès d’Issy for the National Day for Innovation in eHealth organized by the Ministry of Health and Access to Healthcare, Aymeric Perchant, coordinator of the Digital Health Acceleration Strategy, announced the laureates of the third wave of the Tiers-Lieux d’Expérimentation call for projects, among which was Genopole’s D4MedTech project.
This call for projects is part of a multiyear program conferring €63 million over its five-year period from 2023 to 2027. The call finances organizations and structures able to experiment and develop novel digital solutions for “5P” medicine (preventive, predictive, participative, personalized and pertinent). The call seeks to correct a lack of experimentation structures, an identified limiting factor for the development of an eHealth sector in France. Between 2022 and 2024, 37 such environments for experimentation have been chosen over three successive waves of the call, carried out in the name of the French State by the Banque des Territoires.
Selected in the third wave, the D4Medtech project is aimed at developing digital innovations and solutions to structure the care itinerary for diabetes, a major challenge in public health.
“Being chosen by the Tiers-Lieux d’Expérimentation call for projects attests to Genopole’s and its partners’ excellence in and commitment to health innovation” declares GIP Genopole President Stéphane Beaudet.”I warmly congratulate all of the teams and partners involved in this outstanding success. D4MedTech is the manifestation of a shared ambition: transform the diabetology healthcare itinerary thanks to innovative digital solutions while strengthening our position as a center of excellence for eHealth.”
Diabetes is truly a global pandemic. In France alone, it affects more than 4 million people, with a particularly marked prevalence in the Île-de-France Administrative Region, where 600,000 people have the disease. The alarming progression of diabetes, especially in younger populations, presents major challenges to health systems:
- Saturation of care-facility capacity , associated with complex care-provision;
- A lack of infrastructures adapted to monitoring and prevention in patients with mild diabetes;
- Renouncement of care in precarious populations who often see access to it as antagonistic.
In this setting, eHealth processes offer a clear path to improving healthcare provision, preventing complications and optimizing organization within services. D4MedTech is very much within this dynamic, offering a unique framework for experimentation and validation of innovative, patient-centered, digital solutions in 5P medicine.
D4MedTech: complementary competencies for innovation
Conceived to address these challenges, D4MedTech is built upon a unique partnering of hospital, industrial and institutional actors. Headed by Genopole, the project’s consortium comprises the South Île-de-France Medical Center (CHSF), SATT Paris-Saclay, EIT Health France, and the Center for Studies and Research for the Intensification of Diabetes Treatment (CERITD).
The multidisciplinary consortium provides field-leading competencies:
- Genopole provides its research and innovation ecosystem and accompaniment programs (Call for Innovative Ideas, Shaker, Gene.iO) to support the emergence and development of high-potential projects. With its network of international corporations and investors, Genopole also ensures the coordination of D4MedTech.
- The CHSF provides its active patient files and medical expertise, with the support of its clinical research unit. Building upon its integrated offer of intra/extra-hospital care, the CHSF empowers a direct link between patient needs and digital innovations.
- EIT Health France enriches the project with its expertise in the development and evaluation of digital medical devices and its role as a catalyst for national and European projects. Its events initiatives and relationship building with strategic partners and sector experts strengthens the D4MedTech dynamic.
- La SATT Paris-Saclay, a specialist in technology transfers, identifies emerging research projects and accompanies their maturation. This partner plays a key role in the integration of projects within the D4MedTech structure.
- Le CERITD provides its innovation and eHealth expertise, follow-up information on more than 1,350 patients with diabetes, and advanced databases (electronics and genetics). Through its research activities and strategic partnerships, CERITD guarantees a clinical and technical vision to serve patients.
“The D4MedTech project stands out by its inclusive approach“, explains Genopole Digital and Biomedical Innovation Manager Natacha Vitrat. “It seeks to reduce health inequality by providing solutions adapted to vulnerable populations—a major ambition for the territory. To do so, the project will consolidate the expertise of the consortium’s members within a unique experimental framework to enable the development, validation and deployment of digital technologies in real conditions. The project opens a path of excellence and a position in eHealth for Genopole, the project’s leader. As a Tiers-Lieux d’Expérimentation laureate, D4MedTech benefits from strategic support to accelerate its development and increase its impact. D4MedTech represents a model for territorial collaboration, and targets national and European deployment.”
Digital sciences in health: a lever to transform healthcare provision
In the setting of diabetes, digital technologies offer new vistas for:
- prevention and early detection thanks to such technologies as predictive tests or artificial intelligence tools;
- complications management, notably through connected devices like continuous glucose monitors or insulin pumps for patient monitoring and therapeutic education;
- organizational optimization, to fluidify the provision of care between hospitals and private-practice medicine.
