Have we discovered everything there is to know about fœtal medicine and surgery?

Fœtal med­i­cine and surgery are con­stant­ly evolv­ing. Although major advances have been made, we are still far from hav­ing dis­cov­ered every­thing. One of the pil­lars of this devel­op­ment is med­ical imag­ing, which plays a key role in the detec­tion and diag­no­sis of ante­na­tal patholo­gies and serves as a sup­port for pos­si­ble inter­ven­tions in utero. In the future, we can look for­ward to inno­va­tions com­bin­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and advanced imag­ing to fur­ther refine diag­noses and opti­mise inter­ven­tions. For exam­ple, machine learn­ing algo­rithms are already help­ing to improve image qual­i­ty and the detec­tion of struc­tur­al and func­tion­al anom­alies in pre­na­tal imag­ing. In addi­tion, the inte­gra­tion of aug­ment­ed real­i­ty and 3D mod­el­ling from MRI and ultra­sound scans could give both par­ents and doc­tors a bet­ter view of fœtal organs and cer­tain anomalies.

How do you feel about events between biomedical engineering professionals and students, such as we see at the UTC biomedical meetings?

These events are essen­tial for build­ing bridges between aca­d­e­m­ic research, tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion and med­ical prac­tice. They give bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing stu­dents the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk direct­ly to pro­fes­sion­als in the sec­tor, to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the prac­ti­cal chal­lenges in the field and to gear up their work to the real needs of clin­i­cians. For our part, as researchers and prac­ti­tion­ers, these meet­ings give us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cov­er the new gen­er­a­tions of engi­neers who are com­ing up with inno­v­a­tive solu­tions. The UTC Bio­med­ical meet­ing is a per­fect illus­tra­tion of this syn­er­gy, pro­mot­ing a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary approach where med­i­cine and tech­nol­o­gy move for­ward together.

What’s the most beautiful thing about your profession?

The most fas­ci­nat­ing thing about our field is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of trans­form­ing the lives of fam­i­lies and patients, some­times as ear­ly as their intra-uter­ine devel­op­ment. See­ing a child born and devel­op­ing in good health thanks to screen­ing, with a diag­no­sis and some­times an inter­ven­tion car­ried out while they were still in utero is an incred­i­ble and deeply moti­vat­ing expe­ri­ence. The link between tech­nol­o­gy and the human being is insep­a­ra­ble in mod­ern med­i­cine. Tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion may enable us to go ever fur­ther in pro­vid­ing care, but it must nev­er replace the human dimen­sion of the patient-care­giv­er rela­tion­ship. The aim is to use tech­nol­o­gy as a lever in the ser­vice of life but not as an end in itself. The bal­ance between these two dimen­sions is fun­da­men­tal: it is by putting peo­ple at the heart of inno­va­tion that we will suc­ceed in devel­op­ing med­i­cine that is ever more eth­i­cal, pre­cise and accessible!

KD