While the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) is preparing to change its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in the next few days, the Court of Auditors published, on Monday January 23, a rather severe report on its accounts and its management over the period 2015 to 2021.
In an environment where there is a plethora of research organizations involved in the field of life sciences, the magistrates of rue Cambon consider that this situation “singularly complicates the positioning of Inserm, which has not been the subject of clarifications either from it or from that of its supervisory authorities”. They criticize the Ministry of Higher Education and Research for not designating Inserm as the leader in health research. Inserm is not spared. He is accused of not having “refocused on certain disciplines” and continue “to be present on the whole spectrum of biomedical sciences, despite the persistence of redundancies between its research activities and those of other organizations, in particular the CNRS”. The Court nevertheless notes that the work of Inserm is of high quality. “The impact of its publications is, in all fields, above the world average. »
On the financial level, the situation is hardly exciting for the magistrates. Between 2015 and 2019, Inserm recorded four loss-making years, and the financial jurisdiction notes that “this situation has not been the subject of a real recovery plan on its part or of a request for a return to balance on the part of the supervisory ministries”. And for the instance, the surplus 2020 and 2021 fiscal years are “atypical, both due to the slowdown in activities linked to the health crisis and the recording of exceptional revenues”. In his response, Gilles Bloch, whose mandate at the head of Inserm will not be renewed, specifies that the income earned, in particular in 2021, is not all linked to “exogenous factors”the revenue from the patent portfolio being “the result of a long-term profitable development strategy which should continue to feed the establishment’s budget in the years to come, even if in lesser proportions than in 2021”.
Bad management of human resources
Another weak point of Inserm: the management of human resources, which the Court considers “disconnected from scientific strategy”considering that the arrangements which make it possible to take on permanent contracts for selected profiles of doctors or researchers “are insufficient”. Result, if, in the 1980s, 30% of Inserm statutory researchers had medical training, this rate has continued to decrease: 20% in the 1990s, to reach 8.96% in 2015 and 6.5% in 2020. A regrettable situation for the administrative authority, because doctors “ promote research, from the laboratory bench to the bedside”.
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