Training to Transform?

When Innovation and Entrepreneurship Enrich Healthcare Professional Training

Healthcare professionals have the ideas, but not always the (right) tools.

This quote from Professor Thomas Similowski, which concluded our previous article, continues to resonate deeply. It highlights a well-known tension in the hospital world: innovation exists everywhere, all the time—but it too often remains isolated, unspoken, or even invisible.

During seven years of immersion at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital and within the AP-HP (Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris), one conclusion became undeniable: innovation can no longer be a “side-step” in healthcare professional training. It must be an integral part of it. Not as an option, but as a core competency.

Having an idea is a good start. Knowing how to structure it, carry it forward, and, above all, add value to it is quite another. Why should innovation be an integral part of healthcare professional training?

Because we can no longer provide care without innovating. This is our conviction, which led us, for this fourth and final article in our series, to explore two complementary approaches nurtured by years of collaboration: one is academic and structuring, the University Diploma in Biological and Medical Engineering (DU GBM) at the Sorbonne University Faculty of Health, initiated over 35 years ago by Professor Alain Sezeur (Deputy Director) and currently led by Professor Adrien Six (Training Director); the other is agile and anchored in usage, driven by Aude Nyadanu, PhD, and her innovation agency, Lowpital. Two visions, one shared conviction: training is transforming.

The DU GBM: Academia at the Service of Value Creation

1. The Origins of a Unique Training Program

Created in the 1980s by Professor Alain Sezeur, the DU GBM was born out of a founding frustration. At the time, Alain Sezeur was working within a pioneering CNRS team specializing in biosilicone materials. Artificial organs had been developed and patents filed—but they were perceived as “blocking” patents by an American multinational.

I found this personally very frustrating as a young intern and chief resident. So, I created the DU GBM, because biological and medical engineering is the combination of all engineering and medicine.

Pr. Alain Sezeur, Founder and Pedagogical Director of the DU GBM

Even back then, researchers were producing major innovations—but these too often remained unexploited or stuck in the laboratory. This University Diploma was therefore designed to allow participants to build bridges between two worlds: academic research and industry.

Since then, the DU’s mission has not changed: learning how to add value to research, understanding the healthcare ecosystem, and transforming an idea into an intelligible value proposition—for an investor, an industrialist, or an institution. Forty years later, the DU has trained generations of professionals who have founded or structured the first technology transfer offices in universities, hospitals, AP-HP, INSERM, biotech startups, and even international institutions like the World Anti-Doping Agency.

For me, value creation is the ultimate purpose of research. It’s not the publications. It’s about delivering societal benefits.

Pr Alain Sezeur

Professor Adrien Six, an immunology researcher trained at the Institut Pasteur, took over responsibility for the DU in 2024. His journey perfectly illustrates the strength of the program: a former student of the DU GBM and a jury member for over ten years, he became head of the program when its sustainability was at stake. He notes with humor that he took over this responsibility “out of a sense of oblivion”!

Indeed, taking over the DU revealed both the richness and the fragility of the program: a demanding curriculum, an exceptional network of speakers, diverse and loyal audiences—but also a heavy administrative workload carried with limited resources.

A training program of this age, with this many enrollees, which still attracts just as many people despite operational difficulties—it simply must continue to exist.

Pr Adrien Six, head of the DU GBM

2. Who is it for? And why?

The DU GBM’s student body is one of its greatest strengths. Adrien identifies three distinct profiles: working professionals looking to reinvent themselves or better understand the innovation ecosystem; young researchers at the end of their PhD or in post-doc positions, considering a move into the industrial world; and engineering school and innovation master’s students taking the DU as a complementary component of their curriculum.

This represents 70 to 80 enrollees each year, with fully booked sessions and very high satisfaction rates. But beyond the numbers, it is the concrete impact that stands out.

A doctoral student who has completed this training will take a few months to find a job. A doctoral student who lacks knowledge of value creation and the various career paths can sometimes take several years!

Pr. Alain Sezeur

3. Becoming Acculturated to Innovation… and Much More!

To the question “what do participants actually learn?”, the answer is straightforward: “Participants become acculturated to the biomedical innovation ecosystem. They know how to talk about it and understand its codes and vocabulary.”

Learning how to discuss it, speaking the same language, and knowing who to contact at every step of the chain from the innovative idea to the market. However, what speakers and alumni emphasize above all is something deeper: a shift in posture.

After the DU, they know how to speak. They know part of the vocabulary. And above all, they know who to speak to. This is fundamental for anyone questioning their career path.

Pr Adrien Six

It is primarily about discovering an ecosystem. Examples of transformed career paths abound: pharmacists who became heads of medical device evaluation committees, researchers who launched technology transfer offices in major institutions, and biotech startup founders who defended their DU thesis before securing their first rounds of funding. As Julie Rachline , co-pedagogical director of the program, summarizes: “We could almost ask the opposite question: are there any major innovation projects coming out of this Paris-region ecosystem where none of the stakeholders have done the DU?” This network frequently becomes a tangible accelerator.

This vision is shared by Professor Sezeur, who campaigns for the authorization to supervise research (HDR) to formally include a certification of competence in value creation: the Allègre Law of 1999 opened this path by formally establishing innovation as one of the core missions of research professors—it is high time to bring it fully to life.

The LallianSe Perspective:

LallianSe – Life Sciences Integrator has been a partner of the DU GBM for three years, and Julie Rachline serves as its co-pedagogical director. This is not just a label: it represents real involvement in designing content, leading sessions, providing a strategic outlook on the program’s evolution, and acting as a bridge to the field.

It means providing university organizers with insights and a vision from the non-academic side: sensing market needs, advising on how the DU can communicate better, reorganize, and identify areas for improvement.

Adrien Six, on the partnership with LallianSe

Creating a dialogue between two worlds that still speak to each other too rarely is our commitment alongside the University.

This training addresses a real, structural need: equipping healthcare professionals—among others—with the mindset, tools, and the right conversations to turn their intuitions into viable projects.

Lowpital : Instructional Design as a Lever for Transformation?

1. A Different Way of Learning

While the DU GBM provides the framework and structure, Lowpital transforms through experience. Founded by Aude Nyadanu, PhD, Lowpital is an innovation and instructional design agency that helps healthcare institutions and professionals—among others—navigate their transformations.

Our interactions with Aude go back several years, notably through the Challenge Innovation, where she brought her Design Thinking expertise to the heart of the application process. We asked her for her definition of Design Thinking, which is far from being a concept reserved only for experts:

Design thinking consists of approaching challenges creatively and iteratively, focusing on the real needs of users and encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration. It is theoretical common sense.

Aude Nyadanu, founder of Lowpital

The heart of the method does not lie in the tools—but in the posture. And this applies to the least glamorous, yet most frequently neglected step: the needs assessment.

Just change your paradigm: stop looking for solutions among experts based on what you already know, and truly go out into the field to understand the needs. That is the core of the approach.

Aude Nyadanu

She uses a highly evocative image: “If you have a machine, you don’t just want to know if it works or doesn’t work. You want to know what the gears look like inside, and why they sometimes get jammed; otherwise, you can never fix the machine.” This metaphor resonates strongly within a hospital system where dysfunctions are frequently identified but rarely fully understood.

2. What This Changes in the Healthcare Professional’s Posture

Healthcare managers are among Lowpital’s key audiences: “They already inherently possess my three keywords—empathy, humility, and rigor.” What Lowpital offers is a transformation in their relationship with their own power to act.

An example: Anne, a healthcare manager in infectious diseases, initially created a clever device to encourage handwashing using a musical experience and a motion sensor cobbled together from a Halloween prop. A year later, she was setting up an entire vaccination center.

This dynamic also impacts teams as a whole. At the Groupe hospitalier Nord-Essonne (GHNE), a team working on waste sorting in the operating room thought the topic was too complex for them. By breaking the problem down into multiple sub-problems and prioritizing them, they started by improving the color-coding of waste bags, making real headway on the main challenge. A small action, but a huge mental breakthrough! It is about giving healthcare professionals the power and energy to execute and take action.

The impacts extend beyond the individual scale. As Vincent Delivet, Director General of CH Annecy Genevois (a Lowpital client), explicitly put it: since this experiential transformation, staff members come to management no longer with problems, but with projects and requests for support!

3. The Challenges Innovation with LallianSe and the GHU AP-HP Sorbonne Université

Lowpital stepped in on several occasions during the Challenge Innovation cycles. The objective: utilize design thinking methodology to challenge and strengthen the applications of healthcare project leaders, ensuring they addressed real needs on the ground.

Learning by doing, along with empowering everyone to act, transforms one’s relationship with work and innovation, enabling healthcare professionals to become active drivers of their daily routines. Beyond offering a space for development, it is essential to add a fundamental condition for success: project leaders must have the space to experiment, the right to make mistakes, and the institutional backing to see things through. Without this, even the best intentions turn into frustration. Healthcare professional training must therefore be perceived and encouraged from a 360-degree perspective.

The LallianSe Perspective

Lowpital and LallianSe share a founding conviction: do not bring ready-made solutions, but create the conditions so that healthcare professionals and innovators can become the authors of their own transformations.

What we built together in the Challenge Innovation is a hybrid model: the methodological rigor of instructional design, fueled by field knowledge of the hospital, and amplified by our network of healthcare innovation stakeholders. Each edition proved that this mix works.

Perspective : Training is Equipping Those Who Run the System

The DU GBM and Lowpital represent two different approaches, yet they share the exact same conviction. One structures thought, provides vocabulary, and builds a network. The other anchors practice in reality, unleashes initiative, and transforms postures. Together, they outline what any health innovation training should be: demanding yet accessible, theoretical yet pragmatic, individual yet collective.

What these two approaches reveal is a fundamental shift: moving from a posture of an executor to that of an actor. Moving from a professional who undergoes reforms to one who imagines them. From a healthcare worker who observes dysfunctions to one who addresses them—with method, a network, and the words to convince.

Because that is also where a quiet but decisive transformation takes place: learning to speak the language of business. Knowing how to write a business plan, understanding user experience (UX), and mastering the basics of intellectual property are all indispensable skills for being taken seriously by decision-makers.

Thomas Similowski spoke in our last article about the need to “learn to unlearn.” These training programs are a concrete illustration of this: they invite professionals to question their certainties, approach problems differently, and accept iteration as a method and a learning process rather than a failure.

And what if real change started there? Not by waiting for the system to transform from the outside, but by equipping those who run it so they can drive the movement themselves?

Training to care is no longer enough.
We must now train to transform.

We must accept to take ownership of it, moving from a passive stance to a proactive posture. This is, ultimately, the core message of this article—and the common thread running through our seven years of immersion.

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  Hospital Immersion Series – Article #4
  Training to Transform? When Innovation and Entrepreneurship Enrich Healthcare Professional Training Healthcare professionals have the ideas, but not always the (right) tools. This quote from Professor Thomas Similowski, which concluded our previous article, continues to resonate deeply. It highlights a … Continue reading “Hospital Immersion Series – Article #4”
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  Hospital Immersion Series – Article #3
  Hospital Innovation:Why Healthcare Professionals Must Be at the Heart of Change After three initial articles dedicated to our immersion at La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital — exploring the origins of the Innovation Challenges and sharing the stories of projects led by award … Continue reading “Hospital Immersion Series – Article #3”
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  Hospital Immersion Series – Article #2bis
  When healthcare professionals’ ideas become concrete solutions: a comparative look at Pikidou and T-OUT & Romain Gombert (Craft & Care). Because they are closest to patients, their practices, and their needs, healthcare professionals’ ideas and insights have immense innovative potential … Continue reading “Hospital Immersion Series – Article #2bis”

Hospital Innovation:
Why Healthcare Professionals Must Be at the Heart of Change

After three initial articles dedicated to our immersion at La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital — exploring the origins of the Innovation Challenges and sharing the stories of projects led by award winners — we wanted to step back and take a broader view: what happens when innovation is born on the ground… and then confronts the system?

To explore this question, we spoke with Professor Thomas Similowski, Professor of Pulmonology at the Faculty of Health of Sorbonne University and hospital practitioner at AP-HP (Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris). He heads the R3S Department (“Respiration, Resuscitation, Respiratory Rehabilitation, Sleep”) at La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, as well as the joint research unit UMRS 1158 Inserm – Sorbonne University, “Experimental and Clinical Respiratory Neurophysiology.”

Beyond his medical, clinical, and scientific credentials, Thomas Similowski is also an active player in healthcare innovation, at the crossroads of care, entrepreneurship, and research. He is co-founder and scientific advisor of the start-up AUSTRAL Dx, which develops an innovative contactless digital clinical examination device. He is also co-inventor of around twenty patented devices, processes, and methods, and director of a research unit strongly committed to research valorization, with the support of the Research and Innovation Office of Sorbonne University and SATT LUTECH. His perspective is therefore grounded in concrete and ongoing experience of innovation — from ideation to commercialization.

Before this conversation, we had prepared a structured interview guide designed to address field realities, recognition, attractiveness, barriers, solutions… and above all to give space to a strong conviction: healthcare professionals represent an immense reservoir of innovation.

His message — candid and direct from the very first minutes — disrupted our plan. His vision of innovation within public hospitals is critical and highlights a reality often shared by teams:
“Healthcare professionals have the ideas and understand the needs… but they do not always have the tools to turn those ideas into concrete solutions.”

1) The Field: An Irreplaceable “Sensor” of Needs

The observation is clear: the most relevant hospital innovation does not begin in a meeting room — it emerges from daily practice. It grows out of difficulties, “pain points,” care constraints, complex patient pathways, from what “doesn’t work” and, repeated ten times a day, eventually becomes a need.

Thomas puts it very directly: healthcare professionals “know what needs to be done.” They see what is missing, what causes fatigue, what creates risk, what can be improved — because they live the reality minute by minute. This applies equally to organizational innovation (pathways, coordination, roles, interfaces) and technological innovation (tools, devices, digital uses).

During our discussion, he emphasized that “useful” innovation is often field-based innovation: the kind that makes a procedure simpler, a relationship smoother, or care delivery safer. And this is precisely why healthcare professionals must be at the heart of change — not as a principle, but because they are closest to the evidence: what works, what doesn’t, and what would help.

« Healthcare professionals have the knowledge, they have the ideas.»

But he immediately adds the crucial condition: ideas are not enough.

2) From Idea to Reality: The Real Challenge Lies in the “Conditions”

The discussion highlights a central issue: creativity is not lacking in hospitals. What is lacking are the conditions for success — and sometimes even a framework that does not discourage energy before it has had the chance to become a project.

Thomas describes an ecosystem where people sometimes “see the problems before the solutions,” where caution becomes a reflex, and where administrative pathways can feel like a layering process — the opposite of the initial objective. Even when sharp, his remarks reflect a reality recognized by many project leaders: between idea and deployment lies a series of complex steps (legal, organizational, budgetary, regulatory, among others) that are not always clear to those on the front line. He describes a system that too often discourages before it supports.

He uses a powerful expression to define innovation: “divergent creativity” — the courage to step outside the framework, to propose something different, to imagine otherwise. By nature, innovation challenges what already exists:

« Innovation is a form of disrespect. »

This statement, of course meant metaphorically, conveys an essential idea: you cannot create something new without questioning established habits. The problem arises when innovation is expected to be immediately compatible with all processes, validations, and timelines — as if it must strictly remain “within the box.”

For Thomas, the real issue is not asking healthcare professionals to be more innovative — it is enabling them to innovate without exhausting themselves. He summarizes this shift clearly:

« Healthcare professionals have the ideas, but they don’t have the tools.»

These “tools” are very concrete:

• A clear pathway (who to speak to, in what order, and for what deliverable or objective?),
• Identified contacts (who are the right stakeholders within target structures?),
• Timelines compatible with the urgency of care (rather than an abstract, disconnected pace).

He highlights two key areas where real progress is possible: continuous innovation support processes (including associated professional and individual pathways) and the development of a culture that secures experimentation (including the right to test, prototype… and even fail).

He also points to a very operational difficulty: “even when motivated, you sometimes move forward blindly — because you are told about step one but not step two. And just when you think you are progressing, you fall into a ‘hole’ (administrative, legal, methodological).” The result in the field is predictable: motivation turns into apprehension.

This is a reality: between idea and implementation, the journey is often long, difficult, and filled with obstacles unrelated to the project’s intrinsic quality. According to him, “involving healthcare professionals can ultimately produce the opposite of the desired effect: frustration, disappointment, discouragement. A machine that wears down goodwill.”

3) Paramedical Professionals: Immense Potential… Yet Still Too Invisible

During the discussion, Thomas raised a very concrete and revealing question: when an idea comes from a physician, pathways — however complex — exist. But when a paramedical professional has an idea, where do they go? Who welcomes it? Who responds? Who supports them in refining, exploring, prototyping, or protecting it if needed?

His observation is clear: without an identified and accessible pathway, there is a real risk of dispossession. The idea circulates, transforms, sometimes dilutes… and the original initiator may eventually disappear from the radar.

«The problem is not the idea. The problem is the pathway. And for paramedical professionals, that pathway is neither clear nor visible.»

This is why it is essential to give paramedical professionals a central place in hospital innovation thinking. Their practical expertise is decisive: they are closest to procedures, organizational realities, and daily constraints. Yet innovation pathways remain too structured around traditional codes — publications, research mechanisms — that do not always align with their professional journeys. They must be encouraged to dare to formulate, test, and build.

Thomas does emphasize that awareness is growing. Efforts are underway, institutions are beginning to more clearly identify the place of paramedical professionals in innovation dynamics, and some mechanisms are evolving in the right direction. But, in his view, while awareness is emerging, the road ahead remains long to make these pathways truly visible, accessible, and equitable. The challenge is no longer only to recognize their role in care — but to concretely structure their place in innovation.

This is precisely what emerged from the projects presented in the previous articles of this series. Whether the OB-E Foundation, Pikidou, or T-OUT, these projects were born from paramedical field ideas, carried by healthcare professionals who benefited from structured support. The result? Concrete, deployed, useful projects — and above all, strengthened momentum, both individually and collectively.

When the framework is clear, when support structures are available and guidance is adapted, ideas come to life, project leaders remain engaged, and innovation becomes a lever for recognition.

4) Valuing Caregiver Innovation: A Lever for Attractiveness and Recognition

Beyond projects themselves, a broader issue emerges: innovation can help restore momentum to teams — recognition, pride, dynamism, a sense of usefulness, the desire to build.

Even within his demanding vision, Thomas highlights something valuable: hospitals do not lack talent; they sometimes lack signals that authorize that talent to express itself. He notes that innovation requires “breaking codes.” But if the environment penalizes anything that stands out, the natural reflex is caution.

«We must invite healthcare professionals to board a train that is already moving. »

In other words, if institutions want to attract and retain talent, they must demonstrate that they can transform field energy into results — not merely into endless procedures.

5) What Next? Transmitting, Equipping, Making the Path Reproducible

The conclusion is simple: if we want caregiver-driven innovation to become a collective capability rather than an exception, we must equip and transmit.

Thomas puts forward a powerful idea: learning to “unlearn.” Behind this expression lies a reality: many professionals have been trained to “do things right,” to follow rules and tick boxes — which makes sense in care. But innovating also means learning to explore, prototype, test, and allow for imperfect beginnings.

«We would need training to learn how to unlearn. »

Above all, he reminds us of a key point: innovation is not just an idea. It is a process — from creativity to valorization, and sometimes to transfer. For Thomas, basic pedagogy about the “pathway” prevents fear and disengagement: “At the very least, let’s explain what the boxes are.”

LallianSe’s Perspective:

This interview initially left us perplexed. It clearly highlights the difficulties and the key issues of motivation, support, and long-term commitment. But ultimately, it brings forward a central question: the ecosystem is imperfect — should that lead us to give up?

At LallianSe, our DNA lies in action and construction. What we have learned through years of immersion is that you do not change a system outright — but you can support its evolution through leverage points: spaces of trust, agile and innovative initiatives, renewed interactions between caregivers, innovators, and experts.