Artificial intelligence and healthcare: a successful hybridization
On September 25, 2025, the University of Montpellier brought together the university community and its partners for a day dedicated to the theme of "AI and health, global health in the AI era". The aim was to explore the advances, challenges, experimental frameworks and concrete solutions in terms of training, research and innovation. This exploration is already well underway in Montpellier, as demonstrated by the many projects combining AI and healthcare.
A few hundred people gathered at the Institut de Botanique on September 25 to explore the close links between AI and healthcare, which in Montpellier are nothing new. Indeed, the appetite for working together has always been very strong in Montpellier between AI and healthcare, and if the UM is today at the forefront of these fields it's because they have since hybridized.
A long tradition
In the field of research, this long tradition of interdisciplinary hybridization between digital technology and health is already reflected in a number of projects, such as the long-standing " Understanding and acting for the living " project, which aims to amplify collaborations and synergies within the MIPS cluster through the study of living systems, in both fundamental and technological research, in relation to issues in biology, health, agronomy, ecological and environmental sciences.
At Lirmm, artificial intelligence and healthcare are also in dialogue in the field of medical robotics, with the Tirrex platform, a technological infrastructure for research excellence in robotics, where AI plays a key role in proposing new developments for existing medical devices, as well as new intelligent technological solutions for tomorrow's surgery.
At the IRCM, researcher Stéphanie Nougaret is using AI to "digitize" cancer, thanks to a research project she is developing to implement a new approach to the visualization of cancerous lesions by imaging, which has earned her the highly prestigious starting grant awarded by the European Research Council.
Broad spectrum
The AI and health topics dealt with by UM research units cover a wide spectrum. At Idesp, for example, the Inria Prémédical project team includes researchers in statistics, machine learning and AI, as well as clinicians. These diverse profiles are specialized in the development of precision medicine methods based on causal learning and federated learning, which, among other things, ensures the confidentiality of medical data. The aim of this research is to accelerate the availability of targeted drugs on the market, and to deploy decision-support algorithms.
The healthcare sector is faced with an ever-increasing amount of medical data, and healthcare professionals are increasingly dependent on the quality of the design and configuration of their digital tools. To cope with this mass of data, UM, CHU and the Dedalus company have launched a project for 2022, led by ISDM at UM and Erios (Espace de recherche et d'intégration des outils numériques en santé) at CHU.
High-performance analysis
AI is enabling major innovations in healthcare, particularly in the field of personalized medicine, which requires an understanding of disease specificities to better treat patients by deciphering the thousands of mutations that dot our DNA sequences. This is the breeding ground for the SeqOne Genomics start-up, co-funded by the UM, which offers high-performance genomic data analysis solutions for personalized medicine, with the aim of improving the clinical management of patients suffering from cancer and rare and hereditary diseases.
While this research materializes the relationships between AI and healthcare, these links are also close in training, as shown for example by the choice to position a UM Junior Professorship (CPJ) in artificial intelligence within the PhyMedExp laboratory. Zubeyir Salis, holder of this CPJ, has helped to create a new dedicated training course for this year's medical and maieutic students at the Montpellier-Nîmes Faculty of Medicine, based around 2 teaching units of 12 hours each.
Better trained students
Generative AI is also being used to train and assess the skills of medical students, with the Doc Simulator simulation program funded by the UM and designed by Kevin Yauy, a geneticist and specialist in artificial intelligence at the UM and Montpellier University Hospital, which won a NextGen Leaders in Healthcare trophy. The effectiveness of this tool has already been demonstrated, with students trained on the simulator performing better in objective structured clinical examinations.
By 2023, UM had positioned itself in this field with the opening of the ESNbyUM digital health school, which trains future healthcare professionals as well as lawyers, engineers and administrative staff in health data, cybersecurity, digital health tools, telehealth and healthcare communication.
All these projects and initiatives are just the tip of an iceberg, marking a strong site policy that has made it possible to successfully hybridize AI and healthcare in Montpellier.
The "IA Montpellier Méditerranée" association, a major new player on the artificial intelligence scene
On Thursday, September 25, the Occitanie region, Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole, the University of Montpellier, the Montpellier University Hospital, Digital 113 and the French Tech Méditerranée joined forces to create the "IA Montpellier Méditerranée " association, to promote a strong ambition in artificial intelligence for Montpellier and the Occitanie region. Announced last February, this project is rooted in the mathematical and computational foundations of artificial intelligence, but also represents a tool that is now indispensable in the fields of life and the environment.