🧠 Mini-series – The Basics of Clinical Research – Episode 3

Why conduct research as a healthcare professional?

In daily practice, certain questions naturally arise:

💭 Why do some patients respond better to a treatment or intervention than others?
💭 Does this new practice really provide a benefit?
💭 Could we improve the way we diagnose, treat, or monitor patients?

These questions can be the starting point for a research project.

🔎 Conducting research is, above all, about seeking to better understand.

For a healthcare professional, taking part in research can help to:

👉 objectively assess their practices and go beyond clinical impressions;
👉 contribute to advancing knowledge in their field;
👉 improve practices and patient care;
👉 share their field experience and compare it with that of other professionals;
👉 contribute to a collective effort bringing together healthcare professionals, patients, and research specialists.

And above all, having a question does not mean that you need to know how to independently develop a protocol, master statistics, or be familiar with all the regulatory requirements.

🤝 As we discussed in previous episodes, clinical research is a collaborative effort. Peers and specialized professionals can support a project at its different stages: methodological considerations, study design, regulatory procedures, data collection and management, statistical analyses…

A question arising from daily practice can thus become a genuine research question.

What if the next one came from your own practice? 💡

🏒 Together in the Stands for Breast Cancer Awareness Month 🎀

Last October 4, our team was at the Pôle Sud ice rink to cheer on the Brûleurs de Loups against the Spartiates de Marseille, for the 8th round of the Ligue Magnus, during the special Breast Cancer Awareness Month game.

And what an evening! 🔥 The atmosphere in the stands was incredible, matching the intensity of an amazing game! A big congratulations to the Grenoble and Marseille players for putting on such a great show on the ice 👏

The Grenoble supporters made their voices heard to cheer their team on. But the Marseille supporters were not to be outdone: even while playing away, they made themselves heard and created an amazing atmosphere in the stands! 🥁👏

The Brûleurs de Loups ultimately lost to Marseille, but the evening was also about something bigger: the proceeds from the game will be donated to the CHU Grenoble Alpes endowment fund to support a project at the Women's Cancer Center.

For ICUREsearch, it was an opportunity to share a great moment around hockey and, in our own way, take part in a local initiative. 💗

Congratulations to the Grenoble and Marseille players, and thank you to all the supporters for creating such an amazing atmosphere! 👏

👉 CHUGA's Breast Cancer Awareness Month initiatives

🎁 Our initiative continues with the preparation of a Pink Box: a box of small thoughtful gifts chosen together to bring a little comfort to a patient receiving care at CHU Grenoble Alpes.

Behind the data, there are lives.

🎀 Pink October 2026 — Launch

Behind the data, there are lives.

At ICUREsearch, we work every day with health data. Data that tells the story of care pathways and contributes to advancing research.

Behind this data, there are people. This connection is what gives meaning to our work.

As part of Pink October, our team has chosen to come together and take action, at our own level, through two initiatives in Grenoble:

🏒 On October 4, we will be in the stands for the Brûleurs de Loups Pink October game. The proceeds from this game will be donated to the CHU Grenoble Alpes endowment fund to support a project at the Women's Cancer Center.

🎁 We will also prepare a Pink Box: a box containing small thoughtful gifts, intended for a patient receiving care at CHU Grenoble Alpes.

👉 Find out more about the Pink Box collection and the CHUGA Pink October programme:

Two ways to take part, with the same goal: to offer concrete support.

Throughout the month, we will share these moments with you. We will also talk about our work: how carefully collected and rigorously analysed data can contribute to breast cancer research.

💗 Behind the data, there are lives.

🔬 New scientific publication: the DEEPCATH original research article!

We are pleased to share the first scientific publication resulting from the DEEPCATH project, published in Clinical Microbiology and Infection.

DEEPCATH is a research project aimed at developing, through artificial intelligence and image analysis, a tool capable of automatically identifying local signs suggestive of infection at catheter sites.

📸 This original research study focuses more specifically on the assessment of local signs at catheter insertion sites, particularly the detection of redness in clinical practice and by experts, as well as its association with positive blood cultures.

👏 Congratulations to Niccolò Buetti, first author of this work, as well as to all the physicians, healthcare professionals and researchers who contributed to this study.

We are particularly pleased to see Stéphane Ruckly and Chloé Arnould among the authors. ICUREsearch and the OUTCOMEREA network also provided logistical support for the study.

📸 DEEPCATH in a few figures:
• 2,670 catheters and photographs analysed
• 114 local investigators
• Several types of catheters studied: peripheral venous catheters, central venous catheters, arterial catheters, PICCs and midlines.

🔎 Key finding: redness at the insertion site was identified more frequently by experts (13.6%) than by local investigators (8.2%), with moderate agreement between assessments (κ = 0.40).

Among patients with suspected infection, redness was also much more frequent when blood cultures were positive (32.4%) than when they were negative (6.7%).

🧠 These results highlight, in particular, the value of developing standardised and reproducible methods for assessing local signs at catheter insertion sites. The authors therefore discuss the potential of tools based on artificial intelligence and image analysis to make this assessment more objective and consistent.

📅 And DEEPCATH doesn't stop with this publication!

On October 13, 2026, in Tours, during the 8th National SPIADI Mission Day, Guillaume Chazet, Data Scientist at ICUREsearch, will present the results of the DEEPCATH study at 11:00 am. Programme of the SPIADI Day -> https://www.spiadi.fr/missionday

💡 Will you be in Tours? This original research publication is an opportunity to discover the scientific background of the project now and to better understand the issues that will be addressed during Guillaume's presentation.

Registration for the SPIADI National Mission Day is still open until October 2, 2026.

📄 Read the article on PubMed
📍 Programme and registration – SPIADI Day 2026
🤖 Find out more about the DEEPCATH project

📅 On October 13, 2026, in Tours, during the 8th National SPIADI Mission Day, Guillaume Chazet, Data Scientist at ICUREsearch, will present the results of the DEEPCATH project.

🤖 DEEPCATH explores the use of artificial intelligence to analyse photographs of catheters and identify various local features, including the presence of redness.

💡 This project lies at the crossroads of artificial intelligence, image analysis and the prevention of healthcare-associated infections.

A project at the intersection of clinical research, data science and healthcare innovation.

🔗 Find out more about the National SPIADI Mission Day programme: https://www.spiadi.fr/missionday

🧠 A new publication from the SPICE study investigates the association between socioeconomic deprivation and the management of patients with stroke in intensive care.

👨‍🔬 Alexis Marouk is the first author of this publication. Stéphane Ruckly, Head of Biostatistics at ICUREsearch, is also among the co-authors.

📊 This prospective multicentre cohort study included 350 patients across 33 intensive care units in the Île-de-France region.

Among them, 129 patients (37%) were considered to be living in an area of high socioeconomic deprivation according to the French Deprivation Index.

🔗 Read the publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42228330/