Last year, the Centre Françoise Baclesse won the Healthcare Week Luxembourg’s Medical Research Award. Professor Guillaume Vogin, Medical and General Director tells us more about cross-border training programmes for Doctors and how awards can stimulate new research efforts.
Last year, you won the Medical Research Award at the HWL. Which research project did you get this award for?
NHL-CHIREX is a cross-border training program in surgery/radiotherapy, emergency medicine and radiation oncology for doctors and radiology technologists, involving the medical schools of Nancy, Homburg/Saar, Mainz, Liège, and Centre François Baclesse (CFB).
The project allows a whole generation of “borderless” doctors to develop common expertise before treating cross-border patients. It offers additional training modules based on innovative teaching methods using simulation, robot learning and e-learning. In our speciality, we have developed i- a large database to monitor the results and side effects of our treatments, ii- software to learn how to properly draw the organs that we want to protect from radiation, iii- an innovative technique to better irradiate the brain while preserving patients’ memory, speech and mobility
How did getting the award support you in your future research endeavours?
The awards won at last year’s Healthcare Week Luxembourg gave us visibility and will certainly help us in our future research integrating artificial intelligence, and in the protection of our inventions which we now wish to industrialise to benefit as many patients as possible.
“Luxembourg is one of the only countries where life expectancy is increasing.”
Professor Guillaume Vogin, Medical and General Director of the Centre Françoise Baclesse
Which medical research fields would you hope to receive more attention through such awards?
For many years our research has focused on less attractive topics than improving the effectiveness of cancer treatments. At the CFB, we seek above all to better cure our patients, that is to say, spare them sequelae and improve their quality of life. Radiotherapy is an effective treatment applied in 50% of cancer patients. Despite its positive impact on survival, 10-15% of patients experience sequelae that can affect their quality of life.
With the LIH, our research program envisions integrating quantitative imaging data with a radionics approach into the diagnosis and follow-up of adverse effects – especially after brain radiotherapy. In addition, we search for additional individual radiation sensitivity biomarkers using novel research avenues developed at the LIH with the aim of proposing novel tests to help personalize radiation dose.
In what important ways does the French healthcare sector differ from the Luxembourgish one?
Luxembourg is one of the only countries where life expectancy is increasing, notably thanks to state-of-the-art equipment, significant government support, well-trained health professionals (still mainly abroad), and efficient social security. The specificities of the Luxembourg health system are the patient’s freedom of choice and the provider’s therapeutic freedom. The medical offer is generally liberal with the provision of technical platforms by hospitals. I could regret the lesser public funding and integration of clinical research into the health system compared to neighboring countries. The Federation of Luxembourg Hospitals (FHL) has drawn up a list of the main challenges we must face as well as a Horizon 2030 roadmap. Many exciting opportunities are available to us.
