Israel Active

Israel recently held the 2024 conference on innovation in interventional cardiology (ICI) for the 29th year in Tel Aviv. Levron Medical won the $200,000 Jon de Haan Innovation award for its Cardio-Respiratory Physiological Assist  (CRPA) Treatment..

The new Mor Institute's Be'er Sheva branch allows residents to get cancer screening, low-radiation CT scans, virtual colonoscopies, eye care services such as retina consultations and OCT exams, cardiac tests like Holter monitoring and vascular ultrasounds, bone density tests, and more.

With medicine being so complicated, all major medical centers are establishing programs to help junior doctors improve the quality of treatment and research. Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center has established its “Elite Residency and Training Center” for 100+ doctors learning a specialty annually.

Israel Prize winner, Weizmann Institute’s Prof. Michal Schwartz and her research team are working on a groundbreaking treatment to boost immune cells relevant to the brain, cure brain diseases, and slow the aging process. Schwartz founded Israel’s ImmunoBrain (see previously).

Israel’s National Transplant Center has reported that a record number of heart transplants (36) were performed in Israel in 2024. There was also a 6% rise in the number of kidney transplants to 469, including 313 from living donors. Also see article about those who have donated a kidney to a stranger.

In 1972, doctors discovered a woman missing a surface molecule found on all other known red bloods. 50 years later, Israeli and UK researchers have finally identified it as a new blood group, “AnWj-negative”. It will help provide better care for these patients.

Researchers from Israel’s Technion were part of a team that has discovered why only some whiplash injury patients, suffer from chronic pain. It is related to their brain’s memory communication system, plus if they had high anxiety after the injury - literally “painful memories”.

Bar-Ilan University’s Dr Sivan Spitzer and EU colleagues won a €22 million EU-IHI grant for CAREPATH - a 5-year project to use cutting-edge tools to ensure diabetic, obese, and heart patients take their medication. It involves international researchers, plus companies led by Novo Nordisk.

Israel’s OncoHost (see previously) has won a 2025 BIG Innovation Awards for Healthcare. BIG (Business Intelligence Group) CEO Russ Fordyce said,  "We're thrilled to spotlight OncoHost as a shining example of innovation making a profound impact globally."

Israel’s EndoStream Medical, which has just been acquired by Japan’s Kaneka, specializes in developing an innovative implant for the treatment of cerebral aneurysms. EndoStream’s “Nautilus” has been used in hundreds of patients globally to block blood flow to the aneurysm.