“I talked to a general practitioner, who is going to retire and was sad that he wasn't sure someone would continue to take care of his patients. Half of all physicians are going to retire in the next 10 to 15 years! And only one in three medical students returns to work in Luxembourg after their long studies,” Kersten tells Paperjam.

“Did you know that there are 50,000 people employed in the health and social fields in Luxembourg? As many as in finance, but we don't talk about it as much! There's not even any other way to have a better chance of stumbling upon a job offer than reading the Saturday Wort, by virtue of a rule that these ads must be published in a daily newspaper.”

Obviously, in the digital world in which he operates, the founder of healthcare appointment app Doctena, of which he is no longer CEO since the end of last year, cannot be satisfied with that. “In France or Germany, there are a multitude of recruitment platforms, often regional, in Belgium there are four, in Switzerland five.”

The serial entrepreneur--and his team completely in remote mode--is therefore launching MediNation, which will centralise the offers of a first series of partners, such as Hëllef Doheem, Servior, Arcus, Centre hospitalier du Nord, Laboratoires réunis, Verbandskëscht, ZithaSenior, Elisabeth, Fondation Maison de la porte ouverte, Centre hospitalier neuropsychiatrique, Sodexo Senior, Coviva and Bionext Lab. In total, some 50 players could be interested in publishing their offers and finding the staff they need more quickly. So many players who will be faced, especially in the field of personal care, with an unprecedented wave of retirements in the next five to six years.

“Even people who are abroad and not necessarily familiar with the Luxembourg ecosystem will be able to access it more easily,” he explains, although there is still the language barrier in the recruitment process. “I met a Chinese ophthalmologist who lives in London. She won't get her accreditation because she doesn't speak Luxembourgish, whereas with 3,000 Chinese in Luxembourg and the international community, she could have a nice patient base that suffers from a lack of specialists.”

At its launch this Wednesday morning, MediNation had 161 job offers, which will likely be highly regarded across the border with France. Many elected officials in Lorraine complain that Luxembourg is plundering French-trained personnel. Luxembourg finance minister Pierre Gramegna (DP) and the new mayor of Metz, François Grosdidier (Les Républicains), have called for a new organisation of training to meet the needs on both sides of the border.

This article was originally published in French on Paperjam.lu. It has been translated and edited for Delano.