What contribution can AI make to the management of personalized patient care?
Interview with Joël Perez Torrents, PhD student at i3-CRG.
Interviewee presentation: After concluding the polytechnicien engineering cycle with a research master's degree in innovation management, alternating with a consulting firm, I wanted to pursue a thesis out of intellectual challenge and for what my efforts could bring to society. So I joined CRG as a PhD student in October 2020, thanks to a thesis proposed by Professor Etienne Minvielle as part of the Sanofi “AI-Health” chair at École polytechnique.
What project are you currently working on?
The contribution of Artificial Intelligence to the management of personalized patient care is far from obvious. Despite the sensation of novelty and the Promethean rhetoric, technical advances in data are part of historical trajectories that put their hoped-for potential into perspective. Added to this is the complexity of the healthcare sector, with its fragmented ecosystem, variable-geometry players, and regulatory and ethical limitations to innovation... Many dimensions need to be taken into account to integrate technical development so that it serves our purpose: to improve patient care.
This project follows on from the work of Etienne Minvielle, whose recent book, Le patient et le système, published by Editions Seli Arslan (2018), helped me understand the challenges of personalization in the healthcare pathway. It's about pursuing a desire that accompanies medicine from its origins, i.e. the best possible care of the patient, in an egalitarian and - dare I say it - fraternal way, while being aware of the constraints that this imposes. Etienne's genius lies in approaching personalization as an opportunity to solve the problems facing today's healthcare system, rather than as yet another constraint. How can technology help? The equation is far from simple, which motivates me all the more!
How do you see this project evolving?
I'm in the early stages of my research, which began in October 2020. The current theoretical framework highlights the complexity and therefore the richness of the subject. Several fields are envisaged in order to bring concrete elements to the debate.
One of these projects, MODAL, is due to start in March, with a pair of Polytechnique students and a team from the Health Data Hub setting up a method for routinely evaluating healthcare devices.
As a result, the Institut Gustave Roussy lends itself to numerous experiments in personalized care, notably with the PEPON project in partnership with Lausanne University Hospital. These are areas for analysis and potentially for “research-intervention”, the CRG's specialty!
In the near future, I'd like to mobilize the knowledge gained from my training to study a concept that is complex in terms of its blurred boundaries, multi-dimensionality and rapid evolution. I believe that limiting my subject to the management of personalized care (in addition to its potential societal interest) is a necessary anchor point to avoid going off in all directions. It's a question of taking a modest little step forward in our understanding of the world.
Just as my thesis supervisor transmits this to me on a daily basis, I hope to be able to share the enthusiasm and desire for scientific discovery that drives me! I'd also be delighted if the fields I'm working on with Etienne Minvielle enable the laboratory to move closer to the world of healthcare, a sector with great potential for management research.
Link to a publication, interactive support, personal website: (“Work in progress” as the English say)
Interview by Marie Claude Cléon
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