“In a world where health systems are under constant pressure, where innovation is reshaping healthcare delivery and where citizens’ expectations are evolving at breakneck speed, it becomes essential to identify those who are profoundly shaping the healthcare system.

This ranking honors 100 people from the private sector who, through their commitment, their strategic vision, their capacity to innovate or to structure entire sectors, play a major role in transforming the French healthcare landscape.

Designed by Institut Quorum, this report is based on a rigorous methodology and a clear intention: to offer an intelligible reading of what is becoming, today, the active heart of healthcare. And because these transformations cannot be analyzed without territorial grounding, this ranking also opens to several departmental presidents who have made healthcare access a local political priority. A way to articulate private and public, innovation and practical application, national vision and concrete action.”

I am touched and honored to feature in this ranking!

With our MedTranslate2025 international conference, an event bringing together medical interpreters and translators from around the world and which will be held this year in Mulhouse in October, we want to place a critical – yet little-known – subject at the heart of healthcare access: language barriers.

Certainly in its most spontaneous and striking form: a patient in a country whose language they don’t speak, who has a medical emergency and an emergency team that doesn’t speak the patient’s language – and no common language between the two parties. How to explain symptoms, take a medical history, be pedagogical to explain to the patient what is happening to them? Yes, there’s AI or Google on smartphones and that helps in a pinch, but it lacks so many nuances, vocabulary, empathy.

For a minor ailment, it does the job, but in a more complex medical situation… there can be serious translation errors or misunderstandings, which, in turn, can have consequences on the quality or even the relevance of care. This is where the professional medical interpreter comes in – and they make all the difference in patient care.

But this language barrier is not limited to this kind of obvious situation – it also impacts written communication. During pandemics for example, everyone’s access to prevention and protection information in their own language is essential. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, our teams were heavily mobilized to translate visuals of guidelines for German public administrations into the languages of different communities – but also for example safety and protection guidelines for maintenance staff in hospitals or nursing homes. Or remember that interview with Translators without Borders, republished here on the eLoc blog, on the role of local dialects in the Eboal crisis a decade ago?

And then there are all these daily examples, less spectacular, but that do matter. Subtitling/interpreting a video or video conference between 2 research teams. Translating all the documentation for clinical trials conducted in several countries. Helping an expat family who has just moved to France with their MDPH procedures to enroll their disabled child in school. Translating medication leaflets, SPCs, clinical study results… Helping startups that change patients’ lives to spread their wings internationally. And so many others. This language barrier: abolishing it is our profession. A profession in the shadows, little-known, often mistreated – but one of the oldest professions in the world and one that has so much meaning in the world of healthcare.

It is in this context that eLoc Smart Solutions GmbH is a partner this year of Les Assises Nationales de l’Accès aux Soins in Vendôme. Thank you to Groupe Delbo Presse and Institut Quorum, truly honored to feature in this list among some healthcare industry heavyweights!