Israel – A Clean Bill of Health!
Naomi Miller, MIBA, Director of Israel Partnerships
In advance of the upcoming health delegation, we thought we’d share the latest news from the health tech ecosystem in Israel.
Health Tech has been expanding significantly in Israel, making it one of the start-up nation’s fastest growing sectors, a boost that was aided by the increased and immediate demand for solutions during the Covid-19 crisis. 2022 was an impressive year for life sciences in Israel, with over 1800 companies and approximately $5 billion of investment. The sector has been addressing numerous consumer health challenges including cognitive and mental health, telemedicine and remote monitoring, sleep management, senior care, chronic disease management, home diagnostics and screening and medication and pain management.
In 2018, the Israeli Government launched a 5 year program known as the National Program for Promoting the Digital Health Field, at a cost of almost 1 billion Shekels. As part of the initiative, the Ministry of Health, the Israel Innovation Authority and the National Digital Health Plan joined forces in 2022 and selected 19 programs to participate in a new health project to assist Israeli hospitals, HMO’s and health organization develop their R&D infrastructure in partnerships with health tech companies and startups. The combination of both the Start- Up Nation’s human capital along with data accessibility in the Israel health system are major contributing factors for such collaboration. The variety of programs, selected from many of Israel’s leading hospitals and research institutes, include digital infrastructure of clinical testing, infrastructure in the area of digital pathology, digital infrastructure for clinical tests, videos of endoscopies, testing grounds for smart hospitalization at the patients home and collaboration of data from hospital and research communities.
There are numerous factors that contribute to the thriving health sector, but Israel’s unique healthcare system is a major player. By law, Israelis must register for mandatory health coverage through one of its four HMOs and as a result, 100% of Israel’s citizens are monitored from cradle to grave. Insurers, providers, physicians, hospitals, clinics, emergency services and even pharmacies are synchronized and managed by a centralized, completely digitized functioning system that has its medical data stored and accessible for research. This in turn makes Israel fertile ground for companies working on data driven solutions.