Four Israeli startups to test health tech with Thomas Jefferson University
Products help medical professionals analyze data and gain insight into patients’ needs; collaboration program to be expanded to other medical centers
Shoshanna Solomon was The Times of Israel's Startups and Business reporter
Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia in the United States and the Israel Innovation Authority have announced the four winning Israeli companies that will take part in a joint program to develop, test, and pilot technologies, services and devices in the health sector to address unmet medical needs.
The four companies have received a total of $1 million in funding from the Israel Innovation Authority and benefit from testing their concepts in lab settings provided by the university and its Jefferson Health hospitals. The startups will also get access to TJU’s clinical services and administrative staff across a variety of care settings, including inpatient, outpatient, ambulatory, urgent care, rehabilitation and also clinical trials.
The program will expedite the development, testing and eventual commercialization of the technologies, said the Innovation Authority, in charge of setting out Israel’s tech policies and fostering its tech ecosystem.
The competition was announced in February in a bid to help Israeli startup companies to “move their ideas from conception to commercialization.”
“International partnering represents a key strategic anchor for our university as this century unfolds, and the opportunities are unbounded for leveraging global relationships to pioneer technologies in the healthcare and higher education spaces, and in so doing, to give life to our vision for ‘redefining humanly possible,’” said Dr. Mark Tykocinski, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs at Thomas Jefferson University, and dean of its Sidney Kimmel Medical College.
The winning companies all feature technologies that help medical professionals analyze the huge amount of data generated from medical treatment, and gain real-time insights to optimize personalized medical care to patients, the statement said.
Agamon Technologies has developed artificial intelligence-based software to analyze a variety of medical reports and test results; Art Medical has developed a platform to monitor and analyze data to prevent complications that affect patients in intensive care units; Seegnal has developed a digital platform to flag patients who are most likely to have drug-related problems, looking at factors including genetic variables, ethnicity, lab results, and renal function; and Somatix has developed an AI-based wearable remote patient monitoring system.
“The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has put the already overexerted medical system under more pressure of timely diagnosis, and the need to provide remote medical treatment to prevent further spread of the disease,” said Ami Appelbaum, the chairman of the Israel Innovation Authority.
“The winning projects will allow the medical system in Israel, the US and even globally to better sift through multitudes of medical data and provide care givers with a real time understanding of all pertinent medical information to allow them to provide the appropriate and personalized treatment for each patient either at home or at the medical facility.”
The statement said that the Israel Innovation Authority has decided to expand this kind of collaboration to add three more medical centers — the Mayo Clinic and Hartford Healthcare in the US, and the Charité – Universitätsmedizin in Berlin, Germany.
The authority has launched a new call for proposals from startups offering healthcare-related technologies, with a submission deadline by July 2.
The expanded program will open the Israeli medical innovation ecosystem to top-tier facilities, know-how, infrastructure and expertise on a global scale, and provide to Israeli companies with “a unique launchpad for their technologies and services,” the statement said.
