The 3rd UTC Bio­med­ical Ren­dezvous was held on Fri­day 22 Jan­u­ary, 2021. A vir­tu­al edi­tion with online exchanges and con­fer­ences. On the pro­gramme, Stéphane Kirche, Region­al Direc­tor for Inno­va­tion and Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing and Alexan­dre Benoist, Clin­i­cal Engi­neer at the Saône-et-Loire Bresse Mor­van Hos­pi­tal Group, spoke about «The dig­i­tal hos­pi­tal: inno­va­tion in med­ical prac­tices, train­ing and man­age­ment of a ‘GHT’ (Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal Group). 

Stéphane Kirche, Region­al Direc­tor for Inno­va­tion and Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing, and Alexan­dre Benoist, Clin­i­cal Engi­neer at the Saône-et-Loire Bresse Mor­van Hos­pi­tal Group, were able to present, dur­ing the recent (3rd) Bio­médi­cal Ren­dez-vous their day-to-day vision of a “dig­i­tal hos­pi­tal” and to share with the audi­ence some inno­va­tions that can be observed in med­ical prac­tice, train­ing and the man­age­ment of their estab­lish­ment. “New med­ical devices are now more com­plex, more mobile, inter­con­nect­ed and include arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The skills of pro­fes­sion­als must also progress. Care­givers are also becom­ing pro­duc­ers of data at the patien­t’s bed­side. This is the famous “aug­ment­ed care­giv­er”, they explained. “We need solu­tions that improve the qual­i­ty of work and reduce the pres­sure to attain more pre­dic­tive, pre­ven­tive, per­son­alised and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry med­i­cine. At the same time,five bil­lion peo­ple can­not ben­e­fit from med­ical imag­ing tech­niques. Health research, care and inno­va­tion must con­stant­ly evolve.” 

Value-adding to biomedical data

By 2022, 70% of care will have to be pro­vid­ed on an out­pa­tient basis. This is a new sit­u­a­tion, which is push­ing health estab­lish­ments to com­mu­ni­cate with the out­side world (town med­i­cine, GPs, pub­lic health organ­i­sa­tions, etc.). “In a health­care estab­lish­ment, there are three lev­els ofi nfor­ma­tion: the first is at the patien­t’s lev­el and con­cerns iden­ti­ty mon­i­tor­ing, the sec­ond is at the lev­el of the health­care team, this data will enable the man­age­ment and coor­di­na­tion of health­care pro­fes­sion­als, and final­ly, the col­lec­tion of data will advance research,” sum­maris­es Stéphane Kirche. The stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of the med­ical device man­age­ment pol­i­cy in our health ter­ri­to­ries facil­i­tates the col­lec­tion of data pro­duced, makes it pos­si­ble to have all the data avail­able at each stage of the patien­t’s jour­ney, reduces the risk of error and makes the care envi­ron­ment safer. “The issue is a major one, because in just a few years it has become the cor­ner­stone of the per­for­mance assess­ment of our health­care insti­tu­tions,” says Alexan­dre Benoist. 

Research lends weight

This edi­tion also fea­tured the remark­able inter­ven­tion of Christophe Eglès, pro­fes­sor at UTC-BMBI, who pre­sent­ed the appli­ca­tions of addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing for the design of spe­cif­ic patient pros­the­ses. This top­i­cal sub­ject elicit­ed numer­ous reac­tions both from the point of view of the mate­ri­als used and usable and the reg­u­la­to­ry approach for suc­cess­ful inte­gra­tion into the patient care path­way. Christophe Eglès explains: “Approach­ing patients from the start of the project to assess the accep­tance of tech­no­log­i­cal choic­es is an essen­tial pre­req­ui­site for the suc­cess of a med­ical inno­va­tion”. Through work­ing on bio­engi­neer­ing and the devel­op­ment of health tech­nolo­gies, in phase with the social and soci­etal stakes and at the ser­vice of the patient, the research lab­o­ra­to­ries of the UTC, includ­ing the BMBI, Costech and Heudi­asyc Lab­o­ra­to­ries, all serve as sup­port and lend their weight to those bio­med­ical train­ing cours­es sin­gled out as exem­plary dur­ing this event. 

Pioneers in biomedical training

UTC has been a pio­neer in the train­ing of bio­med­ical engi­neers who work in health estab­lish­ments as well as in com­pa­nies. There­fore, it has a very impor­tant and active net­work of grad­u­ates in this field (from 50 to 70 grad­u­ates per year over the past 40 years). Today, its train­ing cours­es include the diplo­ma in bio­log­i­cal engi­neer­ing, the bio­med­ical major, the Mas­ter’s degree in health engi­neer­ing, which organ­is­es the Bio­med­ical Ren­dezvous, the Mas­ter’s degree in Bio­me­chan­ics and Bio­engi­neer­ing, and the spe­cialised Mas­ter’s degree in Bio­med­ical Tech­nolo­gies. They are the heirs of pio­neer­ing cours­es such as the DESS in Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing and the IBMH mas­ter’s degree. “These cours­es meet the needs of the health sec­tor, which is high­ly inno­v­a­tive in terms of tech­nol­o­gy and sub­ject to imper­a­tive qual­i­ty require­ments, stan­dards and reg­u­la­tions. They enable the train­ing of reac­tive and mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary play­ers capa­ble of design­ing, oper­at­ing and main­tain­ing high-per­for­mance med­ical tech­ni­cal plat­forms while tak­ing into account organ­i­sa­tion­al and safe­ty con­straints. Their exper­tise on med­ical devices is put to good use in a com­plex envi­ron­ment (ecosys­tem includ­ing com­pa­nies, health estab­lish­ments and insti­tu­tion­al and reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies) for the ben­e­fit of the patient”, stress­es Isabelle Claude, Head of UTC’s Mas­ter’s degree in Health Engi­neer­ing, Bio­med­ical Tech­nolo­gies and Health Territories. 

Rendez-vous January 22, 2022

“How­ev­er, oth­er schools and uni­ver­si­ties (Poly­tech Lyon and Mar­seille, ISIFC Besançon) have opened such cours­es and the com­pe­ti­tion is grow­ing. UTC has to keep and con­sol­i­date its lead­ing posi­tion. The Bio­med­ical Ren­dezvous was cre­at­ed in order to pro­pose an annu­al event for the French bio­med­ical com­mu­ni­ty and to make it become a year­ly “must” venue. It con­tributes to the ani­ma­tion of the bio­med­ical net­work, which relies on the very dynam­ic and diverse health sec­tor via con­fer­ences of pro­fes­sion­als and researchers,” says Jean-Matthieu Prot, lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tist in charge of the UTC Med­ical Devices and Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs course. It is also an ide­al moment to encour­age and enhance con­tacts between the stu­dents of the bio­med­ical cours­es at UTC, the lec­tur­ers, research sci­en­tists and the pro­fes­sion­al world, to present dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sion­al tra­jec­to­ries illus­trat­ing the diver­si­ty of the out­lets of the cours­es of the UTC and to throw light on work and stud­ies car­ried out by the bio­med­ical stu­dents. We look for­ward to see­ing you at the next edi­tion, sched­uled Jan­u­ary 21, 2022. 

Zoom on some biomedical student projects at UTC

Célestin Garcelon and Justin Lanne have devel­oped an inter­face between patient and hos­pi­tal-based equip­ment in part­ner­ship with the Amiens-Picardie Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal. In the pal­lia­tive care depart­ment, many nurs­ing calls can­not be made because of the patien­t’s phys­i­cal con­di­tion. “The idea is to design a uni­ver­sal tool via an EMG sig­nal detect­ed when the patient has a con­trac­tion. We are in the process of pro­to­typ­ing. It is not up to the patient to adapt to the equip­ment but more the reverse,” they insist. Paul Bro­chet and Megane Fos­so Matchinde have worked with a Nantes based start-up to pro­pose a reg­u­la­to­ry roadmap to facil­i­tate the mar­ket­ing of its pho­toa­coustic imag­ing inno­va­tion. The appli­ca­tions of vir­tu­al real­i­ty in health were pre­sent­ed by Marie Pince­mail’s team. In par­tic­u­lar, she empha­sised the ben­e­fits of this tool for train­ing health pro­fes­sion­als­by sim­u­lat­ing excep­tion­al sit­u­a­tions that com­ple­ment tra­di­tion­al train­ing. Yun­shi Han has devel­oped a mag­net­i­cal­ly con­trolled robot cap­sule for micro-biop­sies and drug deliv­ery with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo (Bel­gium). Anoth­er stu­dent project among many oth­ers — that of Vin­cent Mil­lot-Maysoun­abe — is based on the 3D recon­struc­tion of the bile ducts with the ISIR, the Saint-Antoine Hos­pi­tal in Paris and the BMBI lab­o­ra­to­ry of the UTC. “The aim is to sim­pli­fy endo­scop­ic ret­ro­grade cholan­gio-pan­cre­atog­ra­phy or ERCP. This oper­a­tion accounts for 30 000 cas­es per year in France, with a com­pli­ca­tion rate of 5 to 9% and a fail­ure rate of 20%,” he stress­es. The idea is to cre­ate a 3D mod­el of the patien­t’s bile ducts to increase the suc­cess rate.”