Kevin Yauy: "Talking to both worlds".
On February 13, Kevin Yauy, a geneticist and artificial intelligence specialist at Montpellier University Hospital and the UM, won a NextGen Leaders in Healthcare trophy for his DocSimulator training program. The prize is awarded to ten talented individuals working to shape the future of our healthcare system. We set down the camera on the forecourt of the Faculty of Medicine to talk about his career, which is as committed to helping patients with rare diseases as it is to his health students. Meet him!
Name?
Kevin Yauy.
Position ?
I'm a medical geneticist, PhD in artificial intelligence and head of the biogenerative health laboratory at Erios, Montpellier University Hospital. I help humans to use artificial intelligence to resolve diagnostic impasses, especially for people suffering from rare diseases, which is my core business as a geneticist.
NextGen Award Winner ?
The French Care and Figaro awards recognize ten French personalities who are working to improve our healthcare system. It rewards a career as a doctor-researcher with an early dual medical-scientific background. Above all, for me, it represents an enhancement of our very fine ecosystem in Montpellier, with the CHU, the University and the Metropole.
DocSimulator?
It's an online platform that enables students to train with virtual patients, generated using generative artificial intelligence. Today, we need to train more and more medical students, and train them better, while maintaining the same number of teachers. To achieve this, we applied to the University of Montpellier, which granted us funding under the I-Site program and the Booster innovation Montpellier (BIM). This program enabled us to build, with the CHU, the University and in partnership with the Compute I/O company, a platform that started in 2022.
Today, the platform has been validated by two randomized clinical studies that have shown its ability to train our students to have better clinical skills, but also the AI's ability to properly assess a student as a teacher would.
SeqOnes Genomics?
I did a Cifre science thesis in collaboration with Grenoble's 3IA institute and SeqOnes Genomics, which is our nugget in Montpellier. I had the opportunity to learn about machine learning and AI, but also everything to do with the business world. This was a real added value for me, because I understood, thanks to this experience, that to change things we need a real public-private partnership. This experience enabled me to speak to both worlds.
Telomere or motherboard?
Why choose when you can have both? AI will help us as humans to become better humans to improve patient care, especially for patients with rare diseases.
Science Ac or Star Ac?
More Science Ac than Star Ac! (laughs) Science Ac' was a program where we had the opportunity, as high school students, to go into research laboratories and discover what the world of research is like(Les motivés de la Science Ac', Le Monde, 2007). Learning how to pitch in English in front of a group of much more experienced researchers. And then I learned to break my self-censorship. I grew up in an environment where I didn't necessarily have any reference points, people who had managed to go on to do top studies or go to top schools, and in fact this program enabled me to meet that world and tell myself that it was possible.
Doctor Yauy, Mister...?
Probably Mr musician. Mr guitarist. We were talking about Star'Ac just before, so it's not that far off. From time to time, I play guitar and electronic music. I think that art and creativity can be found in research, but they can also be found in other forms of creation, particularly music.