Inria, the National Institute for Research in Digital Sciences and Technologies, and Doctolib will collaborate to develop reliable and sovereign clinical artificial intelligence models in the health sector, the two parties said.
First step: the creation of a research team bringing together PhD students, postdocs, and research engineers from both organizations to work on several strategic axes.
Four Priority Research Axes
The team will work on developing a trustworthy medical AI, notably focusing on data protection, transparency, and patient respect. The researchers will aim to build systems capable of tracing medical reasoning by understanding causal links, cross-referencing symptoms, medical history, life context, and medical knowledge to estimate health status and its evolution.
A third axis concerns selecting the best personalized health actions, whether screenings, vaccines, or lifestyle changes. This requires causal reasoning systems able to learn from real-world data while taking into account risks, costs, and individual preferences.
Finally, the team will work on systems capable of sustaining long-term behavioral changes by supporting patients over time, adapting to their psychology and constraints.
Two Projects Under Way
The team has begun work on two specific topics. The first aims to optimize the patient care journey by developing a generative model capable of recommending optimal sequences of clinical actions, with the goal of reducing patients’ detours through the care pathway and improving the relevance of care.
The second project concerns AI-assisted clinical diagnostics. The team is developing methods to quantify the uncertainty of diagnostic hypotheses and have practitioners evaluate them on real cases, with AI remaining a decision-support tool that does not replace clinical judgment.
According to François Cuny, Deputy CEO for Innovation at Inria, this partnership reflects a commitment to strengthening collaboration between Inria and French industry in the health sector, by launching joint projects, supporting entrepreneurial dynamics, and attracting top international talent.
“With Inria and other leading research institutes, we are building a joint laboratory toward a general system of medical intelligence. We aim to create in France, Germany, and Europe an open and collaborative ecosystem where public and private institutions can achieve AI-driven clinical advances to improve the health of people and that of health professionals,” explains Stanislas Niox-Chateau, the CEO, on his LinkedIn account.
