1.What are your key areas of interest and research?
Patient safety is the most important. The goal of medicine is to take care of our patients and to monitor them for the rest of their lives. What a pity if they develop radiation-induced pathologies or significant nephropathy through ignorance. Our patient dose management software RadiationDose Monitor (RDM) is an accurate and important tool, thanks to its strong statistical analysis capabilities and its user-friendly interface that involves all healthcare professionals, from medical physicists and referring physicians, to radiographers and radiologists involved in patient diagnosis and radiation safety. Using this tool, these caregivers can build a complete patient dose history and obtain automatic alerts.
2.What are the major challenges in your field?
Training all healthcare professionals involved in the dose cycle is a daily challenge for a number of reasons. Our dose management software training must be as effective as possible, so that the problems of radiation safety are discovered and resolved quickly. Then, you must maintain these good practices for monitoring patient dose. The solution has to become an essential tool to optimize the quality of radiological care. That’s why we have created a user club where everyone can ask questions and provide solutions with the help of our application engineers.
3.What is your top management tip?
I’m a former radiographer. My first job was in a very well-known hospital: Institut Curie in Paris. I worked in the cancer center, where the pathologies too often have poor prognoses − sometimes it was very difficult emotionally, especially when children were concerned. You heard the patients’ voices as you were trying to focus fully on your tasks. But the staff − the radiologists and radiographers − was really incredible: close-knit, strong, cheerful. The hardest moments were shared together. That’s where I met my mentor − and when I’m in trouble, I remember how she displayed leadership and demonstrated what a strong, dynamic and experienced team can do in the face of adversity.
I also like to remind my children: the world belongs to those who smile!
4.What would you single out as a career highlight?
When I finish an application and the teams are happy − that’s real satisfaction! As a product specialist, I have the opportunity to train healthcare professionals in the use of the powerful and user-friendly dose management software tool called RDM.
Customers can hardly believe that we can gather so much dose data − from all manufacturers and from any modalities, and especially from old machines (more than 15 years old). Collecting patient dose data from new equipment is very easy. But connecting to, and collecting dose data from, old machines is another matter. Unfortunately, the park modalities are sometimes decades old. Our IT teams are doing an incredible job to adapt to every configuration that we encounter.
I want to be sure that everyone is autonomous and can find the information that will be useful to their dose management in radiology and nuclear medicine. The satisfaction of our clients − my students − are my ‘career highlight’.
5.If you had not chosen this career path, you would have become a...?
I would have become either a fighter pilot or a doctor in an international humanitarian-aid NGO such as Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).
6.What are your personal interests outside of work?
Family life: time with my wife and my children. The kind of job I have would not be possible without their support − I’m often away on business trips. I’m also interested in general knowledge and culture. I don’t travel without scheduling a visit to a museum or exhibition. Quote: “It is said that the person who will live to be 1000 years old has already been born. I hope I’m that person − because then I can visit all the museums in the world!”
Background
After receiving his Bachelor’s degree from Rennes University, Florent Jault began his career as a radiographer, working in prestigious hospitals in France (including the American Hospital and Institut Curie in Paris). He held the position of Radiology Product Manager at Medical Professionals before being appointed Product Specialist Radiation Dose Monitor (RDM) at Medsquare France.
