Israel Active

The DNA diagnostic breakthrough from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has been funded.  Priority is now for a diagnostic tool for neurodegenerative, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases plus a blood test for the early detection of multiple diseases at their asymptomatic stage.

The US medical organization Mayo Clinic is launching the Mayo Clinic Israeli Startups Initiative. It will encourage collaboration among Israeli health care startup companies and Mayo Clinic and fund joint R&D to accelerate availability of medical innovations to the public.

The SightDX Parasight Malaria Detection Platform from Israel’s Sight Diagnostics is to be introduced into India.  Approximately 880,000 cases of malaria were reported in India in 2013.

Israeli biotech Oramed has reported success in the Phase IIb study of its insulin capsule.  Oramed highlighted that it was the first time an oral solution showed a significant drop in blood sugar at night.  Oral insulin will replace injected delayed-release insulin.

GE Healthcare’s Israeli R&D center has developed the Discovery NM/CT 670 CZT system to perform faster, more accurate, safer and less intrusive SPECT/CT scans of the body.  It uses 50% less radioactive tracers and captures all the required data on multiple organs in a single pass.

The borderline between genius and madness is well known.  Now Ben Gurion University and Weizmann researchers have shown that learning processes can make the brain operate at peak performance in processing incoming sensory information. However, it may also risk causing hallucinations.

Israel’s ReWalk has teamed with Harvard University’s Wyss Institute to develop ‘soft suit’ exoskeleton systems enabling people to walk following stroke, lower limb disabilities, MS etc. Millions need some structural support but not a rigid exoskeleton such as ReWalk.

US personality Jay Leno donated a $36,000 fully equipped “ambucycle” to Israeli Emergency Medical Service United Hatzalah at a concert to support the EMS.  Leno also made a separate appeal to the 1300 members of the audience, which raised another $50,000.

I have reported about Dream Doctors (Israeli medical clowns) previously.  Now you have the opportunity to donate in a matching scheme to sponsor five new clowns to heal and decrease the suffering of sick children in Israeli hospitals.

Israeli startup Illumigyn, is using IDF technology to develop the Gynescope – an advanced machine-vision image-recognition device for gynecologists to identify cervical cancer and other diseases in routine inspections.