The increasingly competitive international context, marked by the emergence of new health challenges, justifies a new impetus for translational and clinical research.

The creation of University Hospital Federations (FHU) by the Greater Paris University Hospitals - AP-HP, INSERM, and universities aims to strengthen hospital-university-research unit relations in order to stimulate medical research and improve the quality of care, through a more rapid diffusion of innovations.

The objective of the FHU is to encourage joint projects between hospitals, universities, research units, industry, etc. and to strengthen their collaboration on medical themes leading to breakthrough innovations.

Thus, these new federations will contribute to the integration of care, teaching and research with a specific governance. The creation of the FHU has three main objectives:

Stimulate hospital-university relations in order to set up collaborative projects on cutting edge themes Increase the visibility and identification of priority themes in research, teaching and care:

• To reinforce the visibility and attractiveness of the themes promoted by the 3 partners (Greater Paris University Hospitals - AP-HP, Inserm, Universities), particularly with regard to clinicians, researchers, academics and industrial partners,
• To promote a continuum between basic research, clinical research, translational research and care. The aim is to accelerate the transfer of research results to the patient’s bedside, to promote excellence in care through early access to innovation,
• Strengthen the common culture between research and clinical activities,
• In the field of teaching and skills development: set up specific actions for and through research that involve the youngest (medical students, residents),
• Diversifying, targeting and optimising funding

In 2012 and 2013, the Greater Paris University Hospitals - AP-HP, the research organisations and the universities approved 16 University Hospital Departments (DHU) for 5 years. This programme and the 16 DHUs were evaluated by the HCERES. The report was very positive and recommended that the experience be repeated. The DHUs have therefore been very structuring for hospital research.

In this context and because they have rapidly changed the research panorama, particularly in the field of health and life sciences, a new call for projects has been launched in 2019, open to DHU teams and to new teams.

As a result, 21 University Hospital Federations (FHU) have been labelled for 5 years. The name DHU has been replaced by FHU which better describes the objective of these projects to bring together and federate clinical and research teams.