Israel is a global leader in medical innovation

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Israel has earned a reputation as a global leader in medical and digital health system innovations, with breakthroughs recently reported in the ongoing battles against Alzheimer’s, cancer and heart disease.

The 21st BIOMED Israel Conference and Exhibition was held in Tel Aviv in mid-May. “BIOMED is Israel’s leading and most established life sciences conference,” the statement reads, noting that this year’s conference focused on aging and artificial intelligence.

“These themes reflect the biomedical needs arising from an aging population with a variety of chronic diseases; a lack of medical professionals; a profusion of data that must be analyzed to realize its potential value; quality of life issues; and rising health care costs,” the statement continued.

Even though Israel’s hospitals and health insurance funds are considered among the best in the world, there are only 30,000 active doctors in the country – 3.19 per thousand people. While the number has increased over the past decade, it is still below the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 3.5.

Participants at the BioMed Israel conference in Tel Aviv (credit: ALEXANDER ELMAN)

Israel was ranked sixth in the 2022 World Index of Healthcare Innovation, similar to its position in previous years. “Israel’s achievements were consistent across all dimensions, with particular strength in science and technology (ninth), thanks in large part to a strong scientific community supported by its world-class university system,” the report notes.

Israel Medtech was founded in 2020 to promote Israeli hi-tech companies specializing in medical technologies. According to the Israel Export Institute, more than 1,200 Israeli companies operate in this field, providing technological solutions to global challenges such as increasing home care, early diagnosis and preventive medicine.

Patients from abroad come to Israel to receive quality medical care and undergo a variety of operations. Save a Child’s Heart, for example, has saved the lives of more than 6,600 children with heart disease.

What are some of Israel’s major medical innovations?

Among the top five Israeli medical innovations are the following:

The Sniffphone, a diagnostic tool that sniffs out diseases, is an evolution of NaNose technology developed by Technion professor Hossam Haick, simplifying the diagnostic process by making the technology accessible through a plug-in that can be connected to smartphones. ReWalk by Argo Medical Technologies. After a tragic accident left him paralyzed from the waist down, Dr. Amit Goffer has spent years developing a way for paraplegics to stand, walk and even climb stairs with the help of an “exoskeleton” robot that receives movement signals from a wrist watch and is powered by a backpack battery. PillCam, a swallowable medical camera. Inspired by personal experience with chronic stomach pain, scientist Gavriel Iddan of Given Imaging (now Medtronic) created a digestible disposable camera that transmits data to a receiver external to the body. The PillCam is now being used to diagnose infections, intestinal disorders and digestive tract cancers. The flexible stent. Millions of people owe their lives to the tube-like device used to open up arteries to treat coronary heart disease and blockages, eliminating the need for open heart surgery. It was developed by Medinol, a company run by husband-and-wife team Kobi and Judith Richter. The 3D printing of a heart with human tissue and vessels, produced by Tel Aviv University researchers led by Prof. Tal Dvir. Now they hope to produce hearts suitable for transplantation into humans, as well as patches to regenerate defective hearts.

One significant way to recognize Israeli health care workers who practice their profession with compassion is the annual Danielle Prize for Medicine with a Heart, established by philanthropist Moti Sonnenfeld in memory of her 20-year-old daughter, Danielle, whose plans to become a doctor they were interrupted by a tragic car accident in 2015. While the Jewish tradition has always valued healing, Sonnenfeld recalls Danielle saying, “Even more important than medicine itself is how doctors treat their patients and their families.

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