Sylvie Bothorel: Structuring Data to Unlock their Full Potential

Tell Us About Your Background

I trained as an engineer, and then did a doctorate in image processing and artificial intelligence, as applied to radiology. I then spent more than twenty years working in the healthcare industry, mainly on medical devices, where I gradually grew away from R&D towards more leadership, innovation, and digital transformation roles.

At General Electric Healthcare, then Kodak/Carestream Dental, Sorin Group, and Air Liquide Santé, I worked in particular on artificial intelligence, medical imaging and valorization of health data. At Air Liquide, I piloted the implementation of a data lake, used by 300,000 patients, before I joined Acteon Group as Chief Innovation Officer.

I joined Paris Brain Institute in 2025 as Chief Data Officer within the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. My role is to structure the governance of the Institute’s data and to promote its reutilization, in particular by helping to set up the Research Data Warehouse, the launch of which is scheduled for 2027.

What is a Data Warehouse?

A Research Data Warehouse collects and structures data from various scientific and medical studies, and makes them interoperable so that they can be shared and combined. This is done in full respect of a robust ethical and regulatory framework.

What could such a Data Warehouse Mean for Paris Brain Institute?

In 2025 Paris Brain Institute inaugurated its new Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, which governs Paris Brain Institute’s “data” forces.

Given this development, making the data available for research in a structured, reliable way, and within a framework, is a priority.

To achieve this, the priority is therefore to make Paris Brain Institute’s already considerable data legacy usable on a daily basis, starting from the foundations. The data warehouse will therefore seek to act as a shared hub, facilitating access to the data sets and meaning that we can avoid starting from nothing for each project.

How Big a Challenge is the Launch of the Data Warehouse, Scheduled for 2027?

The main challenge of the warehouse is not just a technical one. It’s also about establishing clear governance and driving a data culture: deciding who can access what, under what conditions, as well as how to document the data, manage their life cycle (storage, costs) and to guarantee a robust ethical framework, in particular regarding patient involvement and consent. The goal is to industrialize the process, by aligning with the Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL) (National Commission on Information Technology and Liberties), in order to speed up the launch of the projects without risking compliance.

Another goal of the project: interoperability, which means guaranteeing that the data generated by diverse stakeholders (partners, institutions) can interact with each other. This is aimed at opening collaborative spaces around these issues in order to forge future standards.

The work being done must therefore also allow the Brain Institute to weigh in on the implementation of any European policy that addresses these issues.

This profile can be found in Paris Brain Institute’s 2025 Annual Report.