Israel Active

Israel’s Professor Anat Lowenstein was selected in the top 100 most influential people in the world of ophthalmology by Ophthalmologist Magazine. It noted that “her contribution to, and influence in the field of medical and surgical retina cannot be underestimated.”

Israel’s Magdent has developed an electromagnetic-based technology that could speed up the process and improve bone quality in patients who are having trouble getting their implants in place.  After animal trials, a human study is now necessary.

A huge 25-year study of almost 100,000 women by researchers at Ben Gurion University and Soroka University Medical Center has concluded that fertility treatment has no cardiovascular risk to mothers.  4,153 women receiving fertility therapies were compared to 95,138 who conceived naturally.

Israel’s Sweetch has developed a clinical-outcome prediction platform, a behavioral analytics engine and risk meter, to stop diabetes before it starts.  Sweetch’s proprietary machine-learning algorithms detect pre-diabetes seven times more accurately than existing clinical evaluation.

The U.S. FDA has approved Cinqair - the asthma treatment from Israel’s Teva - for adults who have a history of severe attacks despite taking medication.  More than 22 million Americans had asthma as of 2013, and there are more than 400,000 asthma-related hospitalizations each year.

Israel’s BioSight is pleased with its Phase I/IIa study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of its Astarabine treatment for Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and relapsed/refractory Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL).  Full results later this year. 

In Israel’s Negev desert it sometimes takes ambulance services half an hour to reach remote communities. So United Hatzalah is running a training course to increase the numbers of its EMS volunteers from 150 to 250. Its goal is at least one volunteer in every village and kibbutz and to cut the overall response time for EMS personnel throughout the region.

Chen Sabag was born 32 years ago in a Magen David Adom (MDA) ambulance in the southern Israeli town of Netivot.  On March 29, Chen’s son was born to his wife Hadas, in an MDA ambulance near the northern Israeli city of Afula.

International Committee of the Red Cross’s chief surgeon, Dr. Harald Veen, attended Israel’s “Surgical Management in Austere Environments” conference.  He said Israel is a role model for disaster medicine as “Israelis have the knowledge and experience” to excel in emergencies.

Doctors at Hadassah University Medical Centre in Jerusalem successfully treated 15 children from Russia who suffer from osteopetrosis, a rare and fatal genetic bone disease. In the northern Russian Republic of Chuvash, one of every 4,000 newborns has this condition.