In March 2026, the French National Academy of Medicine (ANM) published a long-awaited report on medical photography and video. The result: 73 votes in favour, three against. The conclusion was unambiguous — medical photography and video is a medical act in its own right, and its current management in French hospitals falls well short of what is required.
For those who work with Pixacare every day, the report reads less like a revelation and more like a formal recognition of what clinical teams have known for years.
A problem clinicians already know well
Ask a plastic surgeon, a dermatologist or a maxillofacial surgeon how they manage their clinical photographs. The answer is usually some combination of improvisation and quiet concern: personal smartphones, unsecured messaging apps, images stored on a desktop computer with no link to the patient record.
This is not negligence. It is the symptom of an institutional gap that the ANM report documents with precision. Medical photography is not formally listed in the texts that define the patient medical record — not in Article R1112-2 of the French Public Health Code, not in the Health Authority's description of the shared medical record. Yet in some departments, between 500 and 1,500 photographs are produced every week.
The problem extends beyond hospital walls. A patient monitoring a wound at home. A community nurse documenting a lesion between visits. A general practitioner referring a patient with photographs taken in consultation. Without the right tools, these images travel by SMS, WhatsApp or email, entirely outside any secure framework.
The ANM sets out seven recommendations to address this gap. Reading them, it becomes clear that they describe, point by point, exactly what Pixacare was designed to solve.
The ANM's 7 recommendations — and how Pixacare addresses each one
1. Recognise medical photography as a constituent element of the patient record
A clinical photograph is not an incidental image. It is a piece of clinical data that documents an initial state, traces an evolution and constitutes evidence. Pixacare was built on this principle from day one, enabling direct integration of images into the hospital's electronic patient record, with automatic indexing by patient and date. Comparative before-and-after views and chronological history allow reliable visual follow-up for wounds, burns, scars and dermatological conditions.
Pixacare also extends this logic beyond the hospital. Through a secure link sent by SMS, a patient can photograph a lesion from home and complete an ePRO questionnaire — the image is automatically added to their Pixacare record. Through a dedicated QR code, a community nurse or general practitioner can contribute to the follow-up by adding photographs securely, with no application to install and no account to create. The patient's photographic record builds continuously, across both hospital and community settings.
2. Apply the legal framework for health data
GDPR, data protection legislation, medical confidentiality — medical photographs must follow the same rules as any other health data. Pixacare is hosted on a certified health data hosting server (HDS), located in France. A photograph taken on a clinician's smartphone is never stored in their personal gallery: it is immediately transferred to this secure server. Regulatory compliance is guaranteed, without adding friction to the clinician's workflow.
3. Ensure adequate human and technical resources
The ANM is clear: the clinical value of a photograph depends directly on its technical quality and how it is organised. Pixacare is a web and mobile application that can be installed in minutes on any smartphone or computer. The patient is identified by label scan or from the admissions list. From the moment of capture, each photograph is automatically linked to the correct patient, time-stamped and can be accompanied by an optional clinical questionnaire describing the lesion.
The application also works offline: photographs can be taken without a network connection and synchronised automatically once connectivity is restored — a key advantage in emergency settings, underserved areas and mobile clinical situations, all explicitly mentioned in the ANM report. The application holds ISO 13485 certification and CE Class I marking.
4. Establish appropriate institutional recognition and valuation
The report highlights the absence of consistent pricing for medical photography acts. While the procedure classification evolves, Pixacare allows institutions to document and trace the real volume of photographic acts — valuable data for building recognition cases with health authorities.
5. Formally recognise the role of the medical photographer
The report is unambiguous: the gradual disappearance of medical photographers from French hospitals is one of the direct causes of the deterioration it describes. It recommends that the profession be formally listed in the national health and care professions register — a recognition that already exists in many European countries.
Pixacare does not replace the medical photographer. It supports and complements the role. In departments that still have a dedicated photographer, the application integrates naturally into their workflow. In those that do not, it structures photographic practice across all clinical staff — hospital and community alike — maintaining a level of quality and traceability that approaches what a dedicated professional makes possible.
6. Integrate medical photography into medical and dental training
The report calls for dedicated teaching on medical photography from the first cycle of medical and dental education, within the digital health curriculum. Pixacare supports this shift in practice on the ground: the application structures the photographic process by imposing a solid framework — patient linkage, automatic indexing, immediate secure storage — that builds good habits from the very first use. A new culture of visual clinical documentation is taking hold, department by department.
7. Regulate the use of medical images in teaching and research
This is one of the most sensitive areas the report addresses. Using a patient photograph at a conference or in a publication without specific written consent carries legal risk, as a 2024 ruling by the Strasbourg Tribunal confirmed. Pixacare incorporates a differentiated consent workflow: one pathway for clinical care consent, another for educational or research use.
For conference presentations and teaching, Pixacare includes a patient data anonymisation feature directly within the application, as well as an integrated photography studio with face masking capability. In a few clicks, a clinically rich image becomes fully compliant for sharing.
A solution built from clinical practice
The ANM report cites a concrete example: the plastic surgery department at Strasbourg University Hospital. When the department's medical photographer left and the 150 to 200 weekly photographs per surgeon ended up scattered across personal smartphones, the head of department did not wait for a ministerial directive.
He co-founded Pixacare.
This origin matters. The best digital health solutions are not built in innovation laboratories disconnected from clinical reality. They are built when a practitioner, confronting the problem every day, decides to work with engineers to solve it. That dialogue between clinical practice and technology has produced an application now deployed across 50 institutions, used by 3,500 clinicians for 180,000 patients, with more than one million photographs securely stored.
The results: up to 90 minutes saved per day for a surgeon — a 73% improvement in documentation time compared with conventional methods (Kuster et al.) — and an average of three minutes saved per consultation.
What this report means in practice for your institution
For hospital directors: the ANM report creates a moral obligation — and soon, in all likelihood, a regulatory one — to structure the management of clinical images. Failing to act means exposure to documented legal risk. Pixacare is an operational response, deployable rapidly, without overhauling your information system.
For clinical practitioners: you are already taking photographs. The question is not whether to change your clinical practice, but how to secure and structure it. Pixacare integrates into your existing workflow, on the smartphone you already use, and connects your hospital practice to your community care partners.
For IT directors and information systems teams: HDS-certified hosting, ISO 13485, CE marking, electronic patient record integration, web and mobile architecture with no heavy deployment. Pixacare meets your compliance requirements. Photographs can also be exported for operative records, multidisciplinary team meetings or clinical studies.
Conclusion
The ANM report does not frame medical photography as a problem to be solved. It frames it as an essential medical practice that deserves, at last, to be treated as such — with the resources, rules and recognition it requires.
At Pixacare, this is what we have believed since day one. And what we continue to build, with clinical teams, every day on the ground.
