For almost ten years, the University of Strasbourg has been carrying out and inventory and interpreting its heritage through the action of the Jardin des Sciences, in partnership with the Service de l’Inventaire du patrimoine culturel (regional cultural heritage service) of Alsace. The medical collections constituted by the association of friends of the Strasbourg University Hospitals (AHUS) emerged as a novel field of investigation and research, and a collaborative approach was set up between the association, the Jardin des sciences and the Inventory service. Due to its volume (more than a thousand objects), the diversity of nature (instruments, apparatus, items of furniture etc.) and the different origins of the artefacts, the ensemble raises a number of issues. The first stage in this process was therefore to prepare the operation very precisely, both in its methodological approach and its operational perspective. In the end the partnership could not be properly finalized, an illustration of the complexity of collaborative work involving institutions and associations. After an overview of the inventories of medical collections in France, in order to contextualize the Strasbourg operation and a presentation of the corpus itself and its study phases, article will focus on analysing the main challenges of the project and why, in the end, the project failed.