Portrait of an entrepreneur

From the hospital to the start-up: medical innovations taking wing thanks to a structuring ecosystem

Dr. Mohanad Mahfoud, a cardiac electrophysiologist at the CHSF, has never disassociated care from innovation. Convinced that technology can improve patient care, he has, for several years now, called upon the Genopole ecosystem to transform his ideas into concrete solutions.

It all started with Genopole's Call for Innovative Ideas. Now a multi-laureate of the call, Dr. Mahfoud has developed two projects merging AI and medical imaging:

VR My Heart, a virtual reality prototype for navigating within a specific patient's heart.
AI AutoHeart Segment, a semi-automated tool for the treatment of preoperative images.

His projects led him to participate twice in the D4Gen Hackathon (AI & health) where he mined the collective intelligence of teams comprising engineers, researchers and data scientists. The Hackathon was a chance to take on cutting-edge subjects like the early detection of strokes or the creation of the FAIR database for rare cardiac arrhythmias.

In 2023, he joined the Shaker program to validate the technological, regulatory and economic basis of his project. The program was a shift for the physician: In 2024, he founded the start-up VRAI-Heart aimed at developing digital twins of hearts to optimize cardiological interventions. He went on to join the Gene.iO program in January 2025 with the aims of raising funds for VRAI-Heart and defining its commercial structuration with the objective of commercialization within three years.

Dr. Mahfoud's story illustrates the power of Genopole accompaniment: a unique continuum between detection, maturation, and acceleration designed to help caregivers become entrepreneurs able to impulse novel solutions to change the lives of patients.

Dr. Mohanad Mahfoud is a cardiac electrophysiologist at the South Île-de-France Medical Center (CHSF) since 2013. He carried out his cardiology residency within the AP-HP and completed complementary training in leadership, innovation, medical cost-effectiveness and social impact between 2016 and 2018 within a European Heart Agency program in Maastricht. His passion for innovation and technologies for health led him to explore a range of projects involving robotics, signal & imaging processing and artificial intelligence.