Precision health at the CHUM: first competition to transform care

Precision health is a major breakthrough in medicine. By leveraging big data analysis in health care, it provides a better understanding of individual differences among patients and across populations, taking into account genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors. This approach paves the way for more tailored interventions and better-targeted treatments, with a concrete impact on prevention and quality of care.

It is within this context that the first competition under the initiative “Implementation of Precision Health Projects in Clinical Care at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM)” is being launched, made possible by the exceptional bequest from Mr. Paul Durocher to the CHUM Foundation.

Transforming care through precision health

This competition aims to accelerate the integration of concrete precision health projects into clinical practice at the CHUM through several objectives:

• Implement and evaluate precision health tools or approaches in clinical care settings using a rigorous methodology to demonstrate their clinical and organizational value;
• Promote interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration among experts and/or partners from a variety of disciplines.

For this first call for proposals, $3.1 million was allocated as part of an overall $8 million program, reflecting the vision and ambitions of CHUM’s Precision Health Strategy. Teams could submit their projects in one of the following two categories:

• The category “Pilot Project (up to $100,000)” was intended for smaller-scale projects, such as proof-of-concept projects, projects aimed at gathering preliminary data to support larger grant applications and smaller-scale implementation projects.
• The category “Implementation Project (up to $600,000)” was intended for larger-scale projects focused on the clinical implementation of a precision health tool or approach.

Innovative projects

A total of 13 projects were selected, demonstrating the diversity of precision health initiatives and their cross-disciplinary potential at the CHUM and the CRCHUM:

Projects with a maximum amount of $600,000

1. Dr. Simon Grandjean Lapierre (Immunopathology Research Theme)—Whole genome sequencing of bacteria for identification, rapid genotypic DST and public health interventions.
2. Dr. An Tang and Dr. Benoît Desjardins (Imaging and Engineering Research Theme)—Clinical implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) software to improve care for patients with stroke, pulmonary embolism or cancer.
3. Dr. Michaël Chassé and Dr. Han Ting Wang (Health Innovation and Evaluation Hub Research Theme)—From the laboratory to the bedside of neurocritical care patients: clinical implementation of gene expression profiling and biomarkers for personalized care.
4. Dr. Antoine Desilets (Cancer Research Theme)—CHUM Molecular Diagnostics and Cancer Treatment Committee.

Projects with a maximum amount of $100,000:

1.  Dr. Sami Obaid (Neuroscience Research Theme)—Personalized white matter tractography: a tailored approach to make neurosurgical procedures safer.
2. Dr. Alice Doreille and Dr. Marie-Chantal Fortin (Immunopathology Research Theme)—Integrating nephrogenomics into the kidney pre-transplant care pathway at the CHUM: an assessment of clinical impacts and patient experience.
3. Frédéric Leblond and Dr. Moujahed Labidi—Clinical Integration of Raman Spectroscopy and AI for Real-Time Guidance in Endonasal Skull Base Surgery.
4. Dr. Patrick Benoit (Immunopathology Research Theme)—Non-invasive precision diagnosis of infectious diseases using next-generation metagenomic sequencing.
5. Dr. Dominique Trudel (Cancer Research Theme)—CAPTURE Lung Cancer: Clinical and Pathological Tool Use for the Rapid Evaluation of Lung Cancer.
6. Alexandre Pellan Cheng (Cancer Research Theme)—Multi-Omics Classifier for Identifying Primary Sites of Cancers of Unknown Primary (COMPASS-CPI).
7. Dr. Guillaume Plourde (Health Innovation and Evaluation Hub Research Theme)—Proactive monitoring and early detection of vasospasm following severe subarachnoid hemorrhage in intensive care.
8. Dr. Laura C. Gioia and Dr. Christian Stapf (Neuroscience Research Theme)—PRECISION-STROKE: A multimodal approach to improving prehospital diagnosis of stroke.
9. Houda Bahig and Samuel Kadoury (Imaging and Engineering Research Theme)—Personalized Treatment Optimization Using AI and Advanced Biomarkers in ENT (OPTIMA-ORL).

This competition is a key step in the CHUM’s Precision Health Strategy, moving this approach from a strategic vision to a concrete, measurable and scalable implementation in clinical care. Future editions will offer more opportunities to collectively contribute to a sustainable transformation of health care.