IHU FOReSIGHT

The University Hospital Institutes (IHU) were created in 2011 by the French government to invent the medicine of tomorrow, future treatments and new practices to improve patient care. They are places of scientific and medical excellence, built on a single site integrated around a central theme.

What is an IHU?

Their four fundamental pillars:

One or more recognised health care services.
World-class research teams.
Internationally attractive university education.
Exploitation of discoveries through efficient partnership and translational research.

The main missions of an IHU are to develop diagnostic tools and innovative therapies by bringing basic research closer to clinical concerns, to strengthen knowledge transfer through an integrated training pathway, to accelerate the transition between research and therapeutic applications and to enhance the economic value of scientific discovery and innovation.

The 19 IHUs

2011
IHU	City	Service
ICM	Paris	Neurology
ICAN	Paris	Cardiology/Cardiometabolism and Nutrition
Imagine	Paris	Genetics
Lyric	Pessac	Cardiology
IHU of Strasbourg	Strasbourg	Gastroenterology
IHU Mediterranean Infection	Marseille	Infectiology

2019
IHU	City	Service
FOReSIGHT	Paris	Ophthalmology

2023
IHU	City	Service
THEMA 2	Paris	Oncology/Leukemia
Re-Connect	Paris	Neurology/Hearing Disorder
Women's Cancer	Paris	Gynecologic Oncology
InovAnd	Paris	Pediatric Neurology/Neurodevelopment
Prometheus	Garches	Infectiology/Sepsis
PRISM	Villejuif	Oncology
VBHI	Bordeaux	Neurology/Cerebrovascular Disease
HealthAge	Toulouse	Gérontology
Infiny	Nancy	Gastroenterology/Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Everest	Lyon	Hepatology
RespiERA	Nice	Pneumology
Immun4cure	Montpellier	Infectiology/ Systemic Autoimmune Diseases

IHU FOReSIGHT

Since 2019, the IHU FOReSIH+GHT for Vision has brought together the main players in research and care dedicated to vision diseases.

The IHU FOReSIGHT, created by its 3 founding members (Sorbonne University, Inserm and the National Vision Hospital for 15-20 students), is focused on the Vision Institute and the National Vision Hospital for 15-20 people.

It also integrates, as non-founding partners, the ophthalmology departments of the APHP, the Adolphe de Rothschild Foundation Hospital and the Neurospin laboratory (CEA).

It is supported and coordinated by the Fondation Voir et Entendre.

This ecosystem is united around a common objective: to bring out the care of tomorrow in ophthalmology, by accelerating research and access to therapeutic innovations from the Institut de la Vision and its partners.

Faced with an ageing population and the impact of our lifestyles on our vision, there are many public health challenges to be addressed. Epidemiological studies indicate a doubling of visual impairments leading to blindness in the next 30 years and a tripling of the number of visually impaired people, reaching 600 million people affected by visual impairment worldwide by 2050.

The objectives of the IHU are to:

To accelerate research, to understand our vision and its pathologies, as well as the development of the visual system, to develop therapeutic and diagnostic innovation in ophthalmology and to accelerate the transfer of these innovations to the clinical field.
Facilitate the patient's care pathway by assessing the relevance of therapeutic innovations for the patient and for society, improving patient care whatever the stage of the disease and wherever the patient lives, and by using artificial intelligence for diagnosis and assistance in therapeutic choice.
To promote education, to train expert patients, caregivers and professionals in the sector in therapeutic innovations and new patient care and to build education for all in ophthalmology.
To support the visually impaired by helping them to meet the challenges of everyday life and by restoring their quality of life and autonomy.

The major challenges faced by IHU FOReSIGHT to achieve its objectives

The major challenges are to identify and support research projects with an application that is quickly transferable to patients.

In order to accelerate the transfer, IHU FOReSIGHT promotes the synergy of knowledge in both directions : from research to application to the patient, but also from clinical observations made on the patient to research.

It brings together a world-class scientific and clinical community, particularly around major public health issues: the aging of our populations and the study of its specific impact on the eye and vision, personalized and precision medicine (through imaging, the study of biomarkers and disease modeling, etc.). to support the evolution of medical models) and epidemiology (through the study of the influence of the environment on ocular pathologies and vigilance, material and pharmacovigilance, in particular the side effects of new therapies... to measure the impact of and on our societies.

It contributes to the financing of the selected projects.

Today, restoring sight to patients who have lost it is no longer a pipe dream. Gene and cell therapy, optogenetics or sonogenetics, retinal implants... These are all innovations that we need to help accelerate knowledge and transfer to patient.

Governance

The IHU was created and directed by Prof. José-Alain Sahel until 2023. Today, it is directed by Prof . Christophe BAUDOUIN.

Portrait

A specialist in cataract and glaucoma surgery, ocular surface pathologies, as well as corneal and retinal imaging, Prof. Christophe BAUDOUIN is involved in both research and clinical practice. He was director of a research team at the Institut de la Vision from 2008 to 2022, and he heads one of the components of the Clinical Investigation Center (CIC), dedicated to ocular surface pathologies and glaucoma. He is a Professor at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines – Université Paris Saclay, and Head of Department at the National Hospital of the 15-20, of which he is President of the Medical Commission (CME). He was also Head of the Ophthalmology Department at the Ambroise Paré Hospital, APHP, from 1995 to 2022, which he entrusted to his deputy, Prof. Antoine Labbé. Prof. Christophe BAUDOUIN is President of the European Dry Eye Society, a member of the prestigious American Ophthalmological Society and Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis, and in 1995 he received the title of Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honor.

Prof.
Christophe Baudouin,
director of the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire FOReSIGHT