This website is intended exclusively for healthcare professionals and medical device manufacturers.
By accessing this site, you confirm that you belong to one of its of these categories and understand that the information provided is specifically intented for a professional audience.
"WORKING TOGETHER TO DRIVE INNOVATION"
Dr Hugues Cartier is a dermatologist at a medical centre with a clinical studies department, assisted by a team of young dermatologists. He is also an Associate Hospital Practitioner at the Centre Hospitalier d’Arras.
A former president of the French Society of Lasers in Dermatology, he is currently vice-president of the French Society of Aesthetic Medicine and a member of the EADV and the Royal Society of Medicine. He is also Scientific Director of the IMCAS congresses, a major event in dermatology and aesthetic medicine.
Dr Sébastien Garson is a plastic surgeon practising in Senlis. A former president of the SOFCEP (Société Française des Chirurgiens Esthétiques Plasticiens), he is currently vice-president of the SNCPRE (Syndicat National de Chirurgie Plastique Reconstructrice et Esthétique) and president of Plastirisq.
He is a member of ISAPS, ASPS, SOFCEP and SOFCPRE. He is also Scientific Director of IMCAS.
HC: The combination of a father who is a dermatologist and a founding member of the International Society of Dermatologic Surgery, and a pillar of the SFME from the outset, and a mother who is a doctor of history, gave me the desire to create and the desire to pass on.
SG: My father was a fighter pilot, so perhaps I had a taste for calculated risks, and my mother was a dentist, for accuracy.
HC & SG: It’s classic to say that you mustn’t forget your past in order to build your future, but in our respective cases, it makes sense.
HC: In 2019, when Benjamin Ascher and Sonia Ascher asked me to become scientific coordinator, I was incredulous. Even though I had been president of the laser group (SFLD), then vice-president of the SFME, I remained in the national sphere. I’ve known Benjamin for more than 20 years and he was one of the first to pass me the microphone so that he could work on an international scale. You never forget that.
For the record, my first presentation was in French and even though IMCAS wasn’t what it is today ... not many people understood me at the time. My English has improved a little and I reassure myself that Frenglish has its charm. I didn’t know Sébastien, I had no idea of his character or his ideas, but I have to say that for almost 5 years there has been respect and friendship. We’ve gone from 9,000 doctors in Paris to almost 20,000, so I guess the chemistry works. But this desire to do well is possible because there’s an IMCAS team that does a crazy job with and for us. The team has been overhauled in recent years, with young, multilingual people who have the desire and the pillars who stabilise the machine.
SG: I had just left the presidency of SOFCEP to become president of the plastic surgeons’ union. So it was an opportunity to discover new horizons. Twenty years of working alongside Benjamin creates a bond. And I took one of his many pieces of advice and joined the anatomy laboratory at Le Fer à Moulin. When you see the success of the anatomy sessions at the IMCAS congresses, I have no regrets!
HC: By way of introduction, I’d like to say that IMCAS is a congress by doctors for doctors, an essential event for medical device companies and the entire community involved in dermatology, surgery and aesthetic medicine as a whole. To come up with good ideas, you need to create the right atmosphere. It means forging partnerships with scientific societies from all over the world, and that’s far from easy. It means observing trends, reading articles, seeing what’s being said in the media. It means surrounding yourself with passionate doctors who ensure that the IMCAS team is not just me or Sébastien, but a group of doctors who contribute to its success.
I’m a dermatologist and I practise dermatology as a whole, not just lasers and injectables. The fact that I keep one foot in aesthetic dermatology and the other in so-called medical dermatology is an asset, with its areas of interest for the community, which means that I keep (or at least I try to) a broader vision. You have to look at the program: diversity, eclecticism, innovation!
SG: For Paris, it’s over 1000 speakers and over 300 sessions. It’s absolutely incredible and you often come away frustrated because you have to make choices and time seems to shrink over the 3 days. If you add in the other satellite events, which are smaller than Paris but very dynamic: Bangkok, São Paulo, and in 2025 we’ll be adding Shanghai and Mumbai... It’s easy to understand the dynamics.
HC: Five events is already a good number so as not to dry up the subjects, repeat the same things or listen to the same speakers. But we have other ideas for development. When you add the IMCAS alert, which has become a must-have for doctors who want to get quick, friendly advice from all over the world in just a few minutes. It’s a real community, a precious asset for everyone, and yet it’s free to use.
SG: We’re constantly renewing so that we don’t just stick to what’s easy. That’s the hardest part, and it’s not always well understood by regular speakers. But that’s the job! We’re pushing the younger generation of doctors, developing specific sessions and awards for them, because they’re our future too.
HC: I’m a practitioner, so real research is a long way off. But organising sessions, promoting start-ups (Shark Tank or Magic Wand), pushing new technologies such as ultrasound, dermoscopy, optical microscopy, not to mention AI ... We don’t set ourselves any limits except ethical and moral ones. Getting researchers out of their laboratories and into sessions is a challenge. I define a good session as 1/3 pragmatic practice, 1/3 science and 1/3 a surprise that wakes everyone up. The laboratories that organise symposia also have this tendency to go further. Their scientific quality has undeniably improved and it has even become a challenge for us.
SG: After 25 years of existence, we thought it was time to create a climate conducive to the development of research in our field. That’s what the IMCAS Fund is all about! This donation-foundation was set up by Séverine Dubarry-Bardon (thank you!), based on a long-standing idea by Benjamin and Serge Mordon (thank you!), and we are very proud of it. All doctors and manufacturers can contribute by making donations. We have set up an independent scientific team, which will have to choose from among the more than 80 projects we have received! It’s a success that we need to keep going, and we like that.
HC: It’s obvious, we’re not yet measuring the effects of AI in our daily practice. As far as I’m concerned, I’m already using it to help diagnose skin cancers and to date the skin using AI as a diagnostic tool. It makes my patients laugh or, on the contrary, frightens them. There’s still a long way to go between telling the patient bad news and letting the AI decide to «Botox» in the right place. The human relationship with a clear and honest explanation is, I hope, irreplaceable for a long time to come. I’m just a little worried about the data that is going to be sucked up, chewed up and analysed even faster than it is today. I don’t believe in living with an avatar in a uniform world either, at least not right away. People are already creating their own world with social media, but after the addiction, there’s often a return to earth... Paradoxically, I think that if we’re only talking about pure aesthetics, AI could even bring a singular touch to our current practices, which seem to be a little too standardised according to trends, fashion, countries, ages... Big mouth, etc.
SG: AI, the new challenge.
A real societal challenge that does not spare medicine. Under the pretext of a lack of doctors and accessibility to care, our supervisory bodies, lulled by the sirens of start-ups, imagine that they have found the solution to offer real quality of care, believing that the medical community was a serial killer until now.
This financially driven ecosystem has been totally co-opted by non-doctors. The owners are the players in the future organisation of care, and the promise of helping the medical profession to cope with the difficulties of their work is real, but its use is likely to be more aggressive. Specialities such as radiology and oncology are already on the chopping block, and all that will be left is one doctor to assume medico-legal responsibility.
Another risk could be the loss of the transmission of knowledge of medicine itself. No need to learn it any more, AI will provide it...
SG: ‘’Science without conscience is nothing but the ruin of the soul... ’’
In our field, we have witnessed a veritable explosion of technological offerings over the last twenty years, often happily and sometimes not.
Often, the very status of a medical device makes our patients the guinea pigs for a treatment. Our patients are not guinea pigs, so it’s best to take a step back, analyse carefully and not rush into things. A purely commercial message, however well-rehearsed, is not always good advice. To another extent, the financial aspect can push us to seek maximum profitability, even if it means pushing certain indications, thereby breaking our true role as therapist and advisor. This aspect is also encouraged by the structures that host these technical platforms. This new trend is accompanied by a significant takeover of technical platforms by financial players, who are turning doctors into care providers and, above all, into medical and legal fuses. To put it plainly, the structure profits from the procedure by reducing the remuneration of the doctor, who nonetheless bears the medical responsibility for practices that are sometimes borderline, encouraging the emergence of claims.
On a different note, we are witnessing a distortion in communication, with facilities using social networks to lure patients away from their doctors. The sacrosanct virtue of word of mouth is increasingly under attack from systems that want to do away with this special relationship between patient and doctor.
The trend has been well understood, but will the medical profession be able to maintain the excellence of its care? The future will tell.
HC: Rereading Kipling’s ‘If’ from time to time and following our hypocritical oath, it sounds simplistic but it’s still relevant.
