The importance of digital transformation in hospitals
The digital transition in hospitals presents unprecedented opportunities to improve the efficiency and quality of care. Lifen tackles a major challenge for the sector: the structuring and sharing of medical data. By enabling better access to clinical information, the Lifen platform facilitates communication between healthcare professionals and with patients, thus improving their patient care. This innovation is at the heart of the digital health challenges, making it possible to optimize clinical practices and ensure a more fluid management of care pathways.
Signing at the CHU HealthTech Connexion Day: the CHU of Nantes joins the LUCC cohort, led by Lifen, to structure lung cancer data.
The specific challenges of entrepreneurship in healthcare
While start-ups can play a key role in this transformation, entrepreneurship in healthcare is not without obstacles. As Franck Le Ouay explains, the hospital sector suffers from several specific characteristics that make it difficult to introduce digital solutions, in particular:
- A low rate of digitization: the hospital sector remains relatively undigitized, with resistance to change hindering the adoption of new technologies.
- Financial and human constraints: the lack of resources, whether human or financial, complicates the implementation of digital projects, especially since hospitals often have limited budgets.
- Strict regulation: although necessary to guarantee patient and data security, regulation can hinder innovation, particularly with long delays in validating and integrating technologies.
- A complex economic model: public and private funding are often compartmentalized, and the differentiation between healthcare players makes it difficult to implement comprehensive solutions on a national scale.
- A multi-local operation: each hospital, or even each department, operates according to local specificities, which makes the adoption of uniform digital solutions particularly complex.
- A significant technical debt: the hospital sector has accumulated a considerable technical debt due to previous digitization failures that have left systems obsolete and difficult to modernize.
These challenges, coupled with high entry costs, make it difficult for start-ups to invest in this sector. However, these obstacles are not insurmountable, and specific strategies can help overcome these challenges.
Franck Le Ouay, CEO of Lifen, in Toulouse to present the concrete advances of #France2030 in digital health and predictive medicine.
Advice for entrepreneurs in the hospital sector
Sharing his experience, Franck Le Ouay offers several pieces of advice for entrepreneurs wishing to get started in digital health:
- Focus on the essentials: it is essential to define clear objectives and not to get distracted by overly complex solutions. A simple but effective product can have more impact than an overly ambitious solution.
- Be disruptive: innovation in the hospital sector should not be limited to marginal improvements. To be successful, you have to offer radically new solutions that disrupt existing practices.
- Think about usage: the key to success lies in designing simple and ergonomic solutions that meet the daily needs of healthcare professionals. The aim is for digital tools to be adopted naturally and integrated into the workflow of hospitals.
- Start with small customers: rather than targeting large institutions immediately, it is more strategic to start with smaller structures, where adoption processes are faster and less complex.
- Get out in the field: Direct interaction with end users is essential to understanding their needs and adjusting solutions accordingly.
- Capitalize on word of mouth: Once a solution is adopted and working, word of mouth becomes a powerful lever for growth, especially in a sector like healthcare, where trust is paramount.
- Demonstrate resilience and perseverance: entrepreneurship in the hospital sector is a marathon, not a sprint. The obstacles are numerous, and perseverance is essential to overcome the challenges.
The ITN: developing innovative projects for the new wave of digital transformations
Created in March 2024, the ITN of Mines Paris – PSL is positioning itself as a central player in the digital transition, mobilizing the expertise of its 18 research centers. With strategic focuses such as digital health, digital engineering and cultural industries, the ITN brings together knowledge to meet the economic, social and technological challenges of our time. Driven by a responsible and collaborative approach, it aims to accelerate innovation and guide public and private actors in this transformation.
A seminar to address the challenges of digital health
The Digital Health seminar brought together researchers, industrialists and decision-makers to discuss the major issues surrounding the digitization of healthcare. In a world where technological advances are redefining medical practices, digital health is emerging as a lever for responding to the current and future challenges of the healthcare system. The ITN is exploring these transformations through various themes: the reinvention of hospital infrastructures, the development of digital twins for precision medicine and the integration of artificial intelligence at all levels of healthcare. These issues are not limited to technological innovation; they also question the social, economic and ethical dimensions of connected and intelligent medicine, paving the way for more personalized, accessible and predictive care.
