Health, Innovation and AI: A Dialogue Between Research and Entrepreneurship
At the intersection of research and entrepreneurship, digital health is evolving. But beyond technological promises, its success hinges on a key challenge: real-world adoption.
Artificial intelligence and digital technologies are profoundly transforming the healthcare sector. Prevention, chronic diseases, and personalized care pathways: the promises are numerous, and use cases are rapidly expanding. But as Loïck Menvielle, recently awarded a Horizon Europe project dedicated to LLMs in oncology and cardiology, Professor at EDHEC and Director of the Management in Innovative Health Chair, points out, the value of these innovations does not rely solely on technological performance, but on user adoption.
According to him, three dimensions currently shape the development and adoption of digital health innovations:
- The integration of innovations into care practices
- The transformation of patient journeys through data
- The demonstration of measurable clinical and economic impact
At EDHEC Entrepreneurs, these challenges are reflected very concretely in the startups we support within our incubators.
The Real Integration of Digital Solutions into Healthcare Practices
The first issue raised by Loïck Menvielle concerns the actual integration of digital solutions into healthcare practices. An innovation may be technologically advanced, but it only creates value if it builds trust and becomes part of the daily routines of patients and healthcare professionals.
In the fields of prevention and chronic diseases, the key challenge is to improve adherence to care pathways, anticipate risks, and strengthen patient engagement.
These are precisely the issues addressed by several startups incubated at EDHEC Entrepreneurs.
Suriia, co-founded by Marie Destobbeleir , is developing a workplace health prevention platform that supports employees across various care pathways (cardiovascular health, cancer, mental health), while enabling companies to structure their prevention strategies.
The goal is to make prevention more accessible and engaging in environments where public health challenges and organizational performance intersect.
In a different area, Emycare, founded by Barthélemy Fosse (EDHEC BBA 2014), develops digital screening and diagnostic support solutions in the field of obesity, drawing on behavioral health.
Its approach aims to better understand patients’ needs in order to provide personalized support and improve adherence to care pathways.
Transforming Patient Pathways Through Data and AI
Connected health is also paving the way for more personalized care pathways. Data analysis and artificial intelligence now make it possible to detect weak signals earlier and adapt care accordingly.
This evolution is part of a broader transformation of the healthcare system, in which the relationship between patient, physician, and technology is evolving.
As Loïck Menvielle points out: “Artificial intelligence does not replace the physician. It transforms the dialogue between patient, healthcare professional, and technology by enabling more informed and earlier decision-making [...] AI also helps to better structure data and to develop relevant approaches in increasingly complex environments.”
Some startups incubated at EDHEC Entrepreneurs are precisely exploring these new models:
Myodev, founded by Jérémie Marsac and François Ottavi, designs muscle rehabilitation technologies to objectify clinical decision-making, personalize treatments, and sustainably accelerate patients’ return to autonomy.
With a more exploratory approach, ariah.bio by AMK Biotech, founded by Aïda Meghraouiand formerly incubated at TechForward, EDHEC Business School’s DeepTech incubator, develops solutions combining advanced imaging and artificial intelligence to better understand the structure of human tissues, and is pioneering a new generation of cancer diagnostic tests based on tumor biopsy tissue imaging.
These approaches illustrate a broader trend in HealthTech: data is becoming a central lever to anticipate, personalize, and improve care pathways
Demonstrating Measurable Clinical and Economic Impact
As Loïck Menvielle points out, healthcare innovation cannot be limited to technological demonstrators or pilot phases. Solutions must prove their clinical effectiveness, their economic relevance, and their ability to integrate into a particularly complex healthcare system. In many cases, innovations driven by startups remain disconnected from market realities. It is therefore essential to start from user needs to untangle the complexity of patient pathways or the use of digital therapeutics (DTx).
Success thus relies on the alignment of three elements:
- Technological performance,
- Human acceptability, raising questions around transparency in the deployed technology (Explainable AI – XAI),
- The creation of measurable value for patients (Value-Based Healthcare), healthcare professionals (better diagnosis and care), and organizations (medico-economic impact).
This requirement is now reflected across the entire HealthTech ecosystem. Investors and industry stakeholders are observing a phase of consolidation, where only innovations capable of demonstrating real impact are likely to establish themselves sustainably.
Research and Entrepreneurship: An Essential Dialogue
At the intersection of academic research and entrepreneurial innovation, a key dynamic for the future of digital health is emerging.
The work of the Management in Innovative Health Chair helps analyze the conditions for adoption, use, and value creation of health technologies. In this context, the Connected Health Barometer: Trends for 2026 aims to shed light on developments in the sector and better understand the expectations of both stakeholders and users. Startups, for their part, are experimenting with these models in the field, in direct contact with patients and healthcare professionals.
This dialogue between research and entrepreneurship, at the heart of EDHEC Entrepreneurs’ approach, now appears as a key lever for structuring health innovations and supporting the sustainable integration of artificial intelligence into healthcare systems.
