ENACT’s innovation strategy is centred on our ability to better identify unmet clinical and industrial needs, support French policies aimed at decarbonisation and the reshoring of strategic industries (such as medical devices, pharmaceuticals and strategic materials), and deploy a multidisciplinary approach to addressing these challenges.
Identifying Industry Needs Upstream of Research
ENACT will coordinate the activities of the France 2030-funded University Innovation Hubs POLARIS and PUI-A, the University Hospital Institutes INFINY Nancy and IHU Strasbourg, competitiveness clusters (BioValley France for health and Materalia for materials), start-up incubators, the Inria Startup Studio pre-incubation programme, Technology Transfer Acceleration Companies (SATTs), and the regional innovation agency Grand E-Nov+ in the field of AI. The objective is to identify industry needs upstream of research activities, facilitate access to industrial and medical data, foster connections between expertise and skills, and generate tangible economic and societal impact. ENACT will also build on student entrepreneurship programmes (PeeL, the Lorraine Student Entrepreneurship Hub, and Etena). The overall programme aims to create at least 50 start-ups.
A Federated Organisation
This is a federated-by-design organisation for data access and use. Building on the leading PAISaGE federated health data infrastructure and the Inesia initiative, which connects all stakeholders in digital health, we will implement a similar organisation based on a sovereign architecture to unlock the potential of data science and AI for industry across the Grand Est industrial ecosystem, with the support of the GET clusters dedicated to digital technologies and Industry 5.0, led by Grand E-Nov+.
Awareness, Training and Education
As part of the ENACT education programme, we will promote best practices for education focused on the responsible use of AI in industry and healthcare, targeting an interdisciplinary audience that includes scientists, engineers, physicians and managers. Building on our incubation and student entrepreneurship programmes, as well as our cross-border and international partnerships, we will establish an “Entrepreneur-in-Residence” programme enabling experienced entrepreneurs to work within incubators and share their expertise, experience and knowledge with both start-ups and established companies.
“Industrial Access to AI” Pathway
Through our network of R&D engineers, access to established experimentation platforms, and real-world testing environments, we aim to deliver de-risked projects to industry and support the creation of start-ups, with the goal of establishing at least 50 AI start-ups linked to the academic world.
Creation of the ENACT-Innov Platform
We will build an innovation platform that maps, in real time, the full range of expertise across the consortium through a dedicated technology integration environment. This tool will connect researchers, publications, patents and affiliations across all fields covered by ENACT. The platform will showcase to industry partners the breadth of expertise and resources available within ENACT, while bringing industrial projects closer to researchers by assembling interdisciplinary teams best equipped to develop innovative solutions to complex challenges and implement them effectively. This will strengthen synergies between academia and the socio-economic sector while fostering scientific creativity.
