Montpellier University wins France 2030 program with its
project to create the Digital Health School "ESNbyUM"
The winning projects from the first wave of the Call for Expressions of Interest "Skills and Jobs of the Future" in Digital Health will be presented at the event "Innovating Together in Digital Health," dedicated to major ongo
nd upcoming projects on digital innovation in health, to be held on November 21, 2022, in Lyon, in the presence of the Minister of Higher Education and Research, Sylvie Retailleau, the Minister of Health and Prevention, François Braun, Secretary General for Investment, Bruno Bonnell, and Saila Rinne, Head of Sector – EU policies, European Commission, Unit H3 "eHealth, Well-Being and Ageing." With ESNbyUM, the University of Montpellier is one of nine winners, confirming its leadership in digital health.
The government has decided to fund the ESNbyUM project to the tune of €4,043,200 over a period of five years and to entrust its management to the National Research Agency. The Occitanie Region, which invests heavily in higher education and research, is supporting the project with €600,000 to contribute in particular to the creation of educational resources and the deployment of new digital tools. These financial commitments will be added to the resources provided by the partners who have formed a consortium. Finally, the project has received around fifty letters of support. The project leader is Professor Maurice Hayot (University of Montpellier and Montpellier University Hospital), supported by a multidisciplinary team of experts in the field.
ESNbyUM, an innovative model of excellence in digital health, interdisciplinary, interprofessional, and open to the world of healthcare, research, and business.
Based on the observation that healthcare professionals are still insufficiently trained in the challenges and practices of digital technology in healthcare, at a time when needs and uses are exploding, a Call for Expressions of Interest "Skills and Jobs of the Future" was launched with the aim of supporting the emergence of talent and accelerating the adaptation of training programs to the skills needs, new sectors, and jobs of the future.
The University of Montpellier is a pioneer in the field of digital health, having organized innovative training programs in this area for over ten years: Master's degrees in "ICT for Health" and "Science and Digital Technology for Health"; University Diplomas in "ICT and Health" and "National Inter-University Diploma in Telemedicine"; "DU e-Health: Digital Transformation of Pharmacies and the Pharmaceutical Industry." It has extensive expertise in the fields of health, medical devices (MD), regulatory affairs for health products, law, and health information systems (IS) management, disciplines that are central to the AMI's expectations. Building on this experience and considering that this is a major challenge for our nation, the University of Montpellier, bringing together the strengths of its departments, schools, and institutes in this field, has decided to respond comprehensively and ambitiously to the five actions of this call for expressions of interest, which consist of training in digital health:
- Healthcare and medical-social professionals: Action 1
- Digital specialists with a background in healthcare: Action 2
- Management and senior executives of health and medical-social facilities: Action 3
- Lawyers with digital health literacy: Action 4
- Profiles responsible for regulatory affairs and digital health compliance assessment: Action 5
ESNbyUM in four objectives:
It is a new school, outside the walls, whose objective is to:
- Train more than 20,000 students or healthcare professionals, medico-social professionals, and specialists involved in digital technology and healthcare in digital health over a five-year period.
- Training in emerging professions in the healthcare sector (health data scientist, clinical transformation specialist/consultant, e-health cloud engineer, clinical application trainer, healthcare cybersecurity expert, etc.)
- Offer innovative and distinctive teaching methods based on digital and mobile flipped classroom tools, with the creation of a simple, immersive, interactive, and modular digital campus with spaces designed specifically to enhance the user's sense of immersion.
- Making the University of Montpellier's Digital Health School visible and accessible throughout the country
Strongly supported by the Occitanie Region, ESNbyUM will be the foundation of the region's Digital Health Center of Excellence, working in synergy with all stakeholders in the field, including academics, healthcare and medico-social institutions, businesses, and local authorities. It also aims to become an original French model of precision education, training students in new skills and preparing them for emerging professions in order to meet the major challenges of today and tomorrow in digital health.
Around the University of Montpellier, the project partners organized into a consortium are healthcare institutions (Montpellier University Hospital and Nîmes University Hospital, ICM), training and support organizations (GCS IFSI-LR, KORIAN Academy, KEEPF, FORMATICSanté, IMT Mines Alès, ISIS Castres), the company ONAOS, GIP e-Santé Occitanie, and the Pfizer Innovation France Endowment Fund.
The list of supporters is available here.