News

The University of Montpellier is a winner of the France 2030 program with its
project to create the "ESNbyUM" School of Digital Health.

] - Published on in Press room

The winning projects from the first wave of the "Skills and professions of the future" Call for Expressions of Interest in Digital Health will be presented at the "Innovating together in digital health" event, dedicated to the major
ongoing and upcoming work on digital health innovation, to be held in Lyon on November 21, 2022, in the presence of Sylvie Retailleau, Minister of Higher Education and Research, François Braun, Minister of Health and Prevention, Bruno Bonnell, Secretary General for Investment, 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 9 prizewinners, confirming its leadership in Digital Health.

The French government has decided to fund the ESNbyUM project to the tune of €4,043,200 over a 5-year period, and to entrust its management to the Agence Nationale de la Research. 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 teaching resources and the deployment of new digital tools. These financial commitments will be added to the resources provided by the partners, who have organized themselves into a consortium. Finally, the project has received some fifty letters of support. The project leader is Professor Maurice Hayot (University of Montpellier and Montpellier University Hospital), supported by a multi-disciplinary team of experts in the field.

ESNbyUM, an innovative model for a school of excellence in digital health, interdisciplinary, interprofessional and open to the worlds of care, research and business.

Given that healthcare professionals still receive far too little training in the challenges and practices of digital healthcare, even as needs and uses explode, a "Skills and Professions of the Future" call for expressions of interest was launched to support the emergence of talent and accelerate the adaptation of training to the skills requirements of new sectors and professions of the future.

The University of Montpellier is a pioneer in the field of digital health, having organized original training programs in this area for over ten years: Master's degrees in "ICST for Health" and "Sciences and Digital Health"; University diplomas in "DU ICT and Health", "DIU National de Télémédecine" and "DU e-Santé: virage numérique de l'officine et de l'industrie pharmaceutique". She has extensive expertise in the fields of healthcare, medical devices (MDs), regulatory affairs for healthcare products, and the law and management of healthcare information systems (IS), disciplines central to the AMI's expectations. On the strength of this experience, and considering that this is a major challenge for our nation, the University of Montpellier, federating the strengths of its UFRs, Schools and Institutes in this field, has decided to respond in a comprehensive and ambitious way to the 5 actions of this A.M.I, which consists of training in digital health:

  • healthcare and medical-social professionals: Action 1
  • digital specialists with a health culture: Action 2
  • managers and executives of health and medico-social structures: Action 3
  • lawyers with a digital health culture: Action 4
  • profiles in charge of regulatory affairs and conformity assessment in digital health: Action 5

ESNbyUM in four objectives:

It's a new school, outside the walls, with the aim of :

  • To train more than 20,000 students or professionals in the healthcare, medical-social and specialist fields involved in digital health over a five-year period.
  • Training for emerging professions in the healthcare sector (healthcare data scientist, clinical transformation specialist/consultant, e-health cloud engineer, clinical application trainer, e-health cybersecurity expert, etc.).
  • Offer innovative and differentiated teaching methods based on digital and mobile flipped learning devices, with the creation of a simple, immersive, interactive and modular digital campus, with spaces specifically designed to increase the user's sense of immersion.
  • Make the University of Montpellier's Ecole de Santé Numérique visible and accessible throughout the region

Strongly supported by the Occitanie Region, ESNbyUM will be the foundation of the region's Pôle d'Excellence en Santé Numérique, working in synergy with all players in the field - academics, healthcare and medico-social establishments, companies and local authorities. It also aims to become an original French model of precision education, providing training in new skills and preparing for emerging professions to meet the major challenges of today and tomorrow in digital healthcare.

Around the University of Montpellier, the project's consortium partners include healthcare establishments (CHU de Montpellier and CHU de Nîmes, ICM), training and support organizations (GCS IFSI-LR, KORIAN Academy, KEEPF, FORMATICSanté, IMT Mines Alès, ISIS Castres), the ONAOS company, the GIP e-Santé Occitanie, and the Pfizer Innovation France endowment funds.

The list of supporters is available here.