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G_NIUS: Hundred Days to Success. This is the podcast of G_NIUS, the Guichet National de l'Innovation et des Usages en e-Santé. Around Lionel Reichardt, meet e-health innovators and key experts to help you succeed in your projects.

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Lionel Reichardt: Hello everyone. You're listening to 100 Days to Success, the podcast aimed at innovators and entrepreneurs in digital healthcare, but also at anyone curious about this field. This podcast is produced by G_NIUS, the Guichet National de l'Innovation et des Usages en e-Santé. For this episode devoted to third-party experimentation sites, I'm pleased to welcome Matthieu Faure, project director at DNS, the delegation for digital health within the French Ministry of Health and Prevention. Matthieu Faure, Hello.

00:00:55
Matthieu Faure: Hello Lionel. Hello everyone.

00:00:56
Lionel Reichardt: As part of France 2030, a call for projects with a budget of 63 million euros was launched at the start of the year, with the aim of funding third places to address the lack of experimental sites. This was one of the main limitations identified to the development of the digital healthcare sector during the public consultation to prefigure the acceleration strategy carried out in the first quarter of 2021. By the way, a strategy we talked about in a previous episode of 100 Days to Success with David Sainati. Could you start by defining for us what third places are.

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Matthieu Faure: Thank you. I think you've already pinpointed the problem at the heart of this approach. Today's innovators face a host of difficulties. One of the main ones is that when we deploy or develop a digital solution, we need to know whether it really does meet users' needs perfectly, and whether it fits in with professional practices. And that's quite complex, because it's complicated to arrive at a hospital and say, "Can you test my solution?", and then the hospital, or even the EHPAD, or even the general practitioner, doesn't necessarily have the teams, the infrastructure, in fact, the scientific methodology to simply propose to the bearers of innovation that they can test their solution, evolve it and evaluate it.

00:02:12
Matthieu Faure: So these third-party experimentation sites, which is more or less what he's trying to achieve here, is to enable healthcare organizations, which can be in the health sector, the hospital, its outpatient medicine, but also in the medico-social sector, to offer innovation carriers experimentation sites where users, healthcare professionals, but also innovation carriers can meet to improve their innovations, make them evolve and above all validate them.

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Lionel Reichardt: So, as I was saying earlier, a call for projects endowed with 63 million euros in three annual waves between 2022 and 2024, has therefore been launched to address this difficulty. Can you tell us about it? How does it work? What are the stages?

00:02:52
Matthieu Faure: The call for experimentation third-places projects, it is effectively endowed with a 63 million euro envelope. But it will be divided into two main categories. The first need we're trying to meet, as I mentioned, is to give healthcare organizations the opportunity to structure their open innovation approach. To this end, a call for projects was issued on February 24. The deadline for responding to the first wave is May 25. There will be a second wave early next year.

00:03:20
Matthieu Faure: In this call for projects, organizations will be able to demonstrate that they have the capacity for open innovation, i.e. quite simply teams that carry out needs studies, experimentation and medical-economic evaluations. At the end of this call for projects, we will select ten third places for this first year, ten winners, and the ten winners who have been selected will be able to host experiments. This is where the second envelope comes in. In other words, when the innovation promoters get to know the winners, they will be able to propose their solutions to them for experimentation. And then, of course, with our support, the third places will be able to choose which experiments to carry out. And that's why there's a second envelope dedicated to co-financing these experiments.

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Lionel Reichardt: These third places, can you tell us a little about what kind they are? Are they more healthcare facilities?

00:04:07
Matthieu Faure: The call for projects isn't over yet, so we can't yet predict exactly what these third places will be like. What is certain, however, is that they are open to all healthcare organizations. And for us, it's really important that there should be a network, at least, in the fields of activity. We want third places in hospitals, of course, but we also want third places in the medico-social sector, for the elderly, people with disabilities, early childhood, but also - and this is one of the most innovative vectors - in town medicine. We also want to be able to bring together professionals, citizens and innovators to develop the solutions of tomorrow.

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Lionel Reichardt: Fairly, regarding the budget envelope, the animation of the tiers-lieu is an important subject in the call for projects and the selection of candidates. How do you see it? What kinds of activities are possible?

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Matthieu Faure: This is a very important question. As far as we're concerned, this whole third-party approach is going to be at the heart of the open innovation approach we're aiming for. That's why we're funding them over several years, so that they can be structured and reach out to beneficiaries. There are fairly straightforward elements, such as qualitative studies to meet patients and find out what difficulties they may be encountering, for example in their care pathway or their pathologies, but above all, to help ideas emerge. And then, there's a whole range of methodologies such as Hackathon, Design Thinking or Service Design that will enable us to bring these third places to life, and not simply judge the places where we can come in and sit back and chat, but really where we have collective intelligence where the beneficiary ultimately has a bit of the same role as the practitioner or the bearer of innovation in the design of these solutions.

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Lionel Reichardt: What results are expected from setting up these experimental third places? And are institutions such as HAS, ANAS or ARS involved in these projects?

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Matthieu Faure: We expect two things. We're going to fund 30 third places as part of this call for projects, and we're aiming for around a hundred experiments. And, of course, what we're interested in is that these third places are sustainable. We want them to be able to continue to exist at the end of this funding, this call for projects, so that they can offer innovators this range of tried-and-tested services. The first element of the coup we're expecting, and the second given that we want to experiment with a hundred or so solutions, we're confident that these co-design approaches will enable us to improve these solutions and be sure that they meet their market as to the way out.

00:06:38
Matthieu Faure: So here too, we're waiting. We know that it's in the hundred or so experiments we're going to carry out that we'll end up with products and services that really work and that can be used tomorrow in hospitals, EHPADs and community clinics, once again. And as for the partners, who are regular and privileged partners, you mentioned the HAS, the ANAS, and if we continue, the ARS, the CNSA, the tablecloth, of course, they all have at heart to play this role, already even in the accompaniment of these third places to make them potentially know solutions that they know, but in the longer term, to see how they too fit into this open innovation approach.

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Lionel Reichardt: To conclude, Matthieu Faure I'm an entrepreneur, an innovator in digital health and I want to integrate or participate in a project related to a third-location experimentation as part of the call for projects, what advice can you give me?

00:07:23
Matthieu Faure: There are still a few weeks to go before the call for projects. So, if you haven't already done so, get in touch with the care organizations you know, see if they know about this call for projects and if they can take you on board. And if not, don't worry, once the winners have been announced, you'll have the opportunity to demonstrate and apply. The one piece of advice I'd like to give to all innovators is to really understand the philosophy behind this subject. We're convinced that digital solutions will only exist if they meet a need and professional practices. And I say to the innovators out there, put your trust in these individuals, in the professionals, in the patients, who are in the best position to know what's good for them and to understand how they want or need to use this or that product or service. So come and take part in this process and you'll see, it's so rewarding to take part in this collective innovation process, which we're convinced will help you produce better solutions tomorrow that will meet real needs.

00:08:29
Lionel Reichardt: Matthieu Faure, thank you.

00:08:30
Matthieu Faure: Perfect, thank you very much, thank you to you.

00:08:32
Lionel Reichardt: Our episode comes to an end, thank you for listening. Our thanks again to our guest for his availability. Don't hesitate to subscribe to the podcast on your listening platforms. We look forward to seeing you soon for a new episode of 100 Days to Success.

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