Expert Centre
Specialised Diagnostic and Research Platforms by Condition
What is an Expert Centre?
To enhance the quality and effectiveness of care, the Fondation FondaMental has designed and coordinates a network of Expert Centres. Embedded within hospital services (sector-based or university hospitals) across France, these centres provide multidisciplinary, specialised, comprehensive, and standardised diagnostic assessments, enabling precise evaluations and personalised treatment recommendations.
The History of the Expert Centres
Inspired by the model of rare disease expert centres, the Expert Centres were launched by the Fondation FondaMental. Their creation was approved in 2007 by the Ministry of Research and the Ministry of Health as part of the Thematic Research and Care Networks (RTRS).
They were initially funded on an experimental basis from 2010 by public authorities—first for bipolar disorders, then for schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders without intellectual disability—under the coordination of the Fondation FondaMental.
Today, the Fondation FondaMental coordinates more than 50 Expert Centres across France.
Their Missions
- Improve the accuracy of diagnosis and prognosis
- Harmonise medical practices
- Advance knowledge in mental health
The Expert Centres cover four conditions:
- Treatment-resistant depression
- Schizophrenia
- Bipolar disorders
- Autism spectrum disorders without intellectual disability
Coordination by the Fondation FondaMental
The Fondation FondaMental ensures coordination and training of medical teams and provides all Expert Centres with shared tools, including electronic medical records, national databases, and ethical and regulatory support.
All centres use standardised assessment tools tailored to each condition and collaborate by sharing collected data. Clinical and biological data from consenting patients are analysed, paving the way for precision psychiatry, an innovative and personalised approach to mental health care.
Specialised Hospital Teams
Expert Centres rely on multidisciplinary teams fully integrated within public psychiatric hospital services, whether sector-based or university-affiliated.
Depending on available resources, teams may include psychiatrists, psychologists or neuropsychologists, nurses, clinical research staff, and social workers.
Diagnostic Assessments within the Care Pathway
Expert Centres provide specialised support to frontline psychiatry for the management of the most severe disorders.
They carry out in-depth, standardised diagnostic assessments (psychiatric, somatic, cognitive, and biological), followed by a detailed feedback session with personalised treatment recommendations shared with both the patient and their referring physician.
Centres Serving Research
Teams within the Expert Centres contribute to national and international research projects aimed at improving diagnostic and therapeutic strategies and better understanding the causes of mental disorders.
Voluntary patients may take part in research cohorts, enabling the creation of large-scale databases that support scientific progress.
Data collected through electronic medical records are pseudonymised and stored in databases dedicated to cohort follow-up. Their analysis helps to better understand disease progression, assess treatment effectiveness, and identify risk factors and underlying biological abnormalities.
Objectives
- Short term: build a biobank to complement clinical data
- Long term: accelerate discoveries in psychiatry through the identification of biomarkers
