IHU reConnect
IHU reConnect, the first center of excellence in Europe dedicated to hearing and speech disorders, is led by the Hearing Institute in collaboration with the AP-HP, Inserm, the Université Paris Cité, the Fondation Pour l’Audition and the Institut Pasteur.
reConnect will bring together all the players in hearing health and will also intensify innovation and entrepreneurship around this major public health issue.
The management of the IHU is composed of:
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Anne-Lise Giraud, director
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Anne-Dominique Lodeho-Devauchelle, deputy director
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Claire Paquet, scientific director
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Yann Nguyen, clinical director
Why the reConnect project?
Hearing loss and hearing impairments are a major global burden.
Three factors contribute to the increasing number of people suffering from hearing loss and hearing disorders: we live longer, we have children later, our environments contain new noise pollution (such as compressed sounds).
Today, the tools and medical treatment available of these disorders don’t perfectly meet the growing and diversifying needs. While we can compensate for some hearing deficits, we still don’t know how to cure them, even though they are one of the main causes of social and professional isolation.
Our mission
The ambition is to transition from compensatory medicine to reparative medicine, with the help of the fundamental discoveries made over the past 20 years in the fields of genetics and neurophysiology.
reConnect will pave the way for the creation of new clinical applications with major societal and academic impacts. Its scientific and operational organization, supported by its founding members, aims to create an institute that is unique in Europe, playing a major role in the development of European healthcare policies and attracting the best scientists and clinicians from all over the world.
The IHU's multidisciplinary structure, where research and innovation are at the service of clinical practice and academic training, aims to meet the medical, societal and educational needs raised by hearing disorders.
Our mission
IHU reConnect is organised in 11 workpackages: 5 scientific and clinical workpackages and 6 supporting workpackages.
WP1 : Abrupt and fluctuating deafness
WP2 : Preventing and curing progressive hearing loss
Supporting Workpackages
WP6 : Network and data science
WP7: Connected Research and Medicine
WP8 : Prevention, ethics and society
WP9 : Education, training and communication
WP10 : Innovation management and industrial translation
WP11 : Cross-WP interfaces and new frontiers
Platforms
Existing platforms
CeRIAH Bench (early phase trials/volunteers)
IdA – preclinical research
Platforms: animal phénotyping, bioimaging, signal processing
New platforms
CeRIAH-bedside (clinical trials/patients)
Platforms : experimental surgery, genomics/proteomics
Neurostimulation and imaging (PET-scan, BCI)
What is an IHU?
An Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire (IHU) is an establishment of scientific and medical excellence built on 4 pillars:
An IHU brings together research teams, healthcare professionals, academics, established companies in the sector and new start-ups around a single clinical theme. Its aim is to encourage developments in medical research that directly benefit patients and the general population.
Our founders and partners
The Institut Pasteur, a non-profit foundation with recognized charitable status set up by Louis Pasteur in 1887, is today an internationally renowned center for biomedical research. In the pursuit of its mission to tackle diseases in France and throughout the world, the Institut Pasteur operates in four main areas: research, public health, training, and development of research applications. The Institut Pasteur is a globally recognized leader in infectious diseases, microbiology, and immunology, with research focusing on the biology of living systems. Among its areas of investigation are emerging infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, certain cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, and brain connectivity disorders. The Institut Pasteur's outstanding research is facilitated by the development of a technological environment of the highest standard, with core facilities for nanoimaging, computational biology and artificial intelligence. Since its inception, 10 Institut Pasteur scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine, including two in 2008 for the 1983 discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS.
The Institut Pasteur is part of the Pasteur Network a worldwide network of more than 30 members on five continents, united by Pasteurian values, that contribute to global health.
Since July 1, 2021, the Institut Pasteur is a research partner organization of Université Paris Cité.