digital university

Jean-Charles Pomerol, current UPMC president, was elected for a three-year mandate as president of the Francophone Digital University of Health and Sports Science (UNF3S) by its board of directors at the AGM held in Lille last week. 

“The UNF3S has turned a new page”, suggested the new president after thanking outgoing president Christian Sergheraert, the president of Lille 2 university and the whole management team lead by Pr Albert-Claude Benhamou-APHP and Anne de Lamotte, general secretary of the university. The brand new president reiterated the directions of development of the university: “the development and transmission of distance courses ensuring equal access to all students, as is the case at Pierre et Marie Curie, Joseph Fourier-Grenoble , Paris Descartes  and Lyon 1  universities; making distance learning facilities available to developing countries and, finally, the therapeutic education of patients, home care and support for caregivers…”

A name change for the digital university. The UNF3S takes over from the Université Médicale Virtuelle Francophone (UMVF), created in 2003 by the ministries of education and finance. This was the first digital thematic university in France, dedicated to e-learning in medicine with the support of all of France’s medical faculties.

University management. Professor Albert-Claude Benhamou, APHP, remains the general director of the university, supported by a deputy director for each of the four streams of the university:
- medicine: Jean-Paul Francke, dean of medicine, Université Lille 2, president of the CIDMEF
-   pharmacy: Françoise Galland, UNSPF projet leader, Université d'Angers
-  dentistry: Marc Bolla, dean of dentistry, president of the of deans of dentistry conference, Université de Nice
-  sports science: Patrick Pelayo, Director of the Staps, Université Lille 2

Integration of new disciplines: pharmacy, dentistry and sports science. Students of these three disciplines will benefit from open and free access to all the digital teaching resources existing in France. The number of participating universities has risen from 33 to 51.

The UNF3S is open access to all students and teachers. Certain digital campuses are especially popular. For example, the medical English digital campus has had over 3 million visits since its creation a year ago. The UNF3S also aims to inform and educate the general public about risk prevention, and to promote French health and sports science.

The UMVF runs an education program for 7000 health professionals in the francophone countries of Africa and South East Asia on the pathologies of “mother and child”, supported since 2008 by 3 million euros from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The first graduation for these international inter-university diplomas will take place on October 31.