The Neurodis Foundation
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An innovating concept |
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Neurodis works on the basis of strong interactions between fundamental and clinical research for the patients’ benefit
Neurodis’s founder institutions have a policy of bringing research teams together geographically on hospital sites around neurology and neurosurgery departments and technological research platforms:
the Lyon Neurocampus and Institut Fédératif des Neurosciences at the Neurology Hospital and Vinatier Psychiatric Hospital site;
the Grenoble Institute of Neuroscience, at the Michallon Hospital.
The Saint-Étienne and Clermont-Ferrand neuroscience research teams are likewise fully integrated into their local hospital structures.
Synergy between Lyon, Grenoble, Saint-Étienne and Clermont-Ferrand is a key advantage for three main reasons:
The patient-centered Neurodis Foundation combines the catchments of the Lyon, Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand and Saint-Étienne teaching hospitals so as to run epidemiological and therapeutic studies on sufficiently large patient cohorts to be able to ensure rapid, relevant and statistically sound results (50,000 neurology department admissions in 2004). Only such a large-scale clinical recruitment enables issues specific to certain rare and orphan pathologies to be raised.
Neurologically challenged patient management is already being coordinated between the various teaching hospitals concerned, ensuring harmonized practice enabling clinical trials even for highly technical treatment strategies involving a relatively small number of patients. For example, 110 patients per year (one third of the national total) undergo epilepsy surgery exploration in Lyon and Grenoble, using identical consensual procedures. The same holds for neurostimulation in Parkinson’s disease and for neurological pain.
All heavy neuroscience equipment investment – positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI: 1.5T and 3T), and magnetoencephalography (MEG) – is coordinated at regional level.
The Neurodis Foundation is France’s largest outside the Paris area in terms of neuroscience and clinical personnel, with over 800 people, including 400 research and clinical staff.