Israel Active

Tel Aviv University (TAU) researchers have partnered with Swiss biotech Neovii to find a vaccine against Covid-19. TAU will use their 2015 patented research into the MERS virus to accelerate their work on Covid-19.

Israel’s Zebra Medical has just received its fifth FDA approval - this time for its Vertebral Compression Fractures (VCF) image analysis product. Zebra’s latest AI solution automatically identifies likely compression fractures from scans.

Dr. Ami Sperber, professor emeritus of Ben-Gurion University, initiated a 10-year epidemiology study of 73,000 patients in 33 countries. It found that over 40% of the world’s population have Disorders of Gut-Brain Interactions (DGBI). The data is vital to gastrointestinal knowledge.

Kamel Abdel Rahman fell from the second floor of the apartment he is building. He landed on a metal rod that penetrated his head from left cheek to right ear. Surgeons at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital extracted the rod in two nail-biting operations.

Israel’s DiA Imaging Analysis (reported previously) uses its AI image analysis of ultrasound scans to detect cardiac problems.  DiA has received a NIS 2.5 million grant from the Israel Innovation Authority to roll out its system to hospitals treating coronavirus patients.

Surgeons at Israel’s Save a Child’s Heart performed open heart surgery on two-year-old Hamza Ali Mohammed, who was born with life-threatening congenital heart disease. He has been hospitalized during the coronavirus pandemic but has now returned to his family in Ramallah.

Israeli biotech Gamida Cell published positive results in its Phase 3, 50-center trial of NiCord (now called Omidubicel) that aims to increase the success of bone marrow transplants in blood cancer patients. The stem cells were established much quicker than alternatives.

Israel’s Sheba Medical Center has inaugurated a new intensive care unit with hundreds of beds to provide crisis response in future national emergencies. A significant donation for the unit was received from philanthropist Roman Abramovich, a long-time donor of Sheba Medical Center.

Emergency service Magen David Adom and its 24,000 volunteers were critical to Israel’s pandemic strategy. Its trained volunteer call center handled over 100,000 calls a day and it minimized hospitalizations by testing 240,000 patients away from hospitals.

The US FDA has allowed the use of technology developed by Israel’s Aidoc Medical.to detect lung anomalies in CT-scans that are associated with coronavirus (Covid-19). It provides early detection of infected patients who show no coronavirus symptoms.