Hervé Hubert

Hervé Hubert is born in Marseilles (France) in 1969. After his PhD thesis defence, he had the opportunity to take over a position of associate professor (1999) at Lille university within the Faculty of Health Management and Engineering (ILIS). He participated in the creation of the Laboratory of Public Health of Lille (EA2694) in which he still leads “care quality” one of the three main topics of research. He was able to open two new M.Sc. study specialities (health risk management and health logistic), of which he is the referent. After his post-doctoral degree defence (accreditation to supervise PhD students) in 2009, he was appointed full Professor. Research thematic: My first works focused on the building of workload assessment tools in the resuscitation field and led to the building of a medico-economic performance assessment system in these units. We consequently applied what we learned from these first elements of research to the topic of prehospital emergencies. We notably worked on the construction of severity indicators and medico-economic indicators in SAMU-SMUR (mobile medical emergency unit). This work and our expertise were recognized by the French ministry of health, which asked us to participate in the ministerial working group concerning a new activity-based payment model applied to prehospital emergency sector. We subsequently widened our field of application to emergency medicine, but also to transplants (logically linked to emergency and resuscitation) on the topic of performance assessment, as well as to obesity, in terms of assessment tools of economic and environmental issues. This work, on the analysis of patient cohorts, led us to consider and implement epidemiological approaches in agreement with the strategic direction of my research laboratory. At that time, we began to work on clinical trials. A clinical trial on cardiac arrest (CA) (epinephrine vs. epinephrine+vasopressin) has made us aware of the importance of this issue for public health and in the emergency field. Cardiac arrest (CA) is an important public health issue, with an estimated incidence of 50,000 cases per year in France. Community survival rates in France for CA are still low (approximately 5%). This is not a French specific situation because despite efforts to improve CA care, overall survival rates remain low in most countries. However, these survival rates vary widely around the world (range: 2–20%), indicating that there is room for improvement and potential to improve resuscitation care and implementation of the “chain of survival”. A well-organized and exhaustive evaluation can enable the identification and understanding of the relevant indicators for effective CA care. The development of a CA registry is one way to meet this assessment need. I contributed to the foundation of the French national cardiac arrest registry (RéAC) and its supporting establishment, that I am currently directing. The main aims of RéAC are: • To assess the OHCA survival rates and quality of care of the OHCA • To assess the effectiveness of the chain of survival • To assess practices used during BLS and ACLS • To define quality indicators in order to improve OHCA outcomes • To identify where and when OHCA events occur and who is affected locally and nationally • To develop and support epidemiological and clinical research My current work is mainly linked to the consolidation and the development of this establishment (independent non-profit organization, 3 full-time equivalents, 30 associated researchers). I am involved in the financial and human resources aspects but also to increase the scientific status of this unique database in France on this topic. Since 2011, this work, allows us to position nowadays RéAC as the largest European registry on the thematic with about 130.000 cardiac arrests recorded. This establishment is certainly the most rewarding recognition of our research work, as this project led to the creation of an autonomic structure, employing 2 engineers and a clinical research associate, and is also the research field of two PhD and several MD.