Archive For The “Israeli Medicine” Category
Israeli researchers from the government-run Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) expect to begin human trials for the COVID-19 vaccine candidate they developed after the high holidays this fall.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with IIBR Director-General Professor Shmuel C. Shapira on Thursday, as well as with heads of the IIBR research team and “congratulated them on the progress in developing a vaccine against the coronavirus, ahead of the stage of human trials, which will start after the fall holidays,” the Government Press Office said in a statement.
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“I am pleased to hear about the progress and I want to congratulate you on it. Continue on this path with the maximum speed that you deem scientifically sufficient,” Netanyahu said, according to the announcement.
Defense Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz visited the Ness Ziona-based research institute on Thursday, the Jerusalem Post reported.
“Experiments on humans should begin after the Tishrei holidays,” Gantz was quoted as saying in reference to the first month of the Hebrew calendar when the high holidays begin. “The human trials will be conducted in collaboration with the Health Ministry…and according to all the processes required in terms of medical safety,” Gantz added.
Professor Shapira said the institute developed “an excellent vaccine” over the past six months. During the call with Netanyahu, he held up a vial and said: “This is the first vial of the vaccine.”
Netanyahu instructed that evaluations begin on the establishment of vaccine production in Israel “so that Israel will have safe and effective vaccines for all residents of Israel by the end of the first quarter of 2021.”
He also instructed that an outline be drawn up to allow other countries to purchase vaccine options from Israel. “The financing thus obtained will be able to assist in the establishment of production capabilities and processes,” he said, according to the announcement.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Israel’s Sheba Medical Center is set to use top-of-the-line Israeli tele-medicine technologies to care for 11 nationals making their way back from a coronavirus-stricken cruise ship docked off the coast of Japan for the past several weeks. The Israelis are expected to arrive at the hospital early Friday where they will be placed in isolation for the next 14 days.
This article was originally posted by NoCamels.com.
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The patients do not have any symptoms of the novel coronavirus which has so far (as of February 20) infected over 75,000 and killed over 2,1000 people, mainly in mainland China, but the 14-day quarantine is in accordance with guidelines set out by the World Health Organization. Three Israelis traveling on the ship, the Diamond Princess, were diagnosed with the coronavirus, currently known as 2019-nCoV and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and are currently hospitalized in Japan. The ship was carrying over 3,700 people from more than 40 countries.
The 11 Israelis will be housed in an isolation unit at an evacuated hotel on the Sheba campus but away from the main hospital, the medical center said in a statement.
Virus particles are shown emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. The spikes on the outer edge of the virus particles give coronaviruses their name, crown-like.
The hospital will be using technologies such as medical robots, devices and AI-powered sensors operated remotely by doctors to monitor patients and conduct basic check-ups. Participating Israeli companies include Tyto Care, a tele-health company that developed handheld, at-home examination devices that examine the heart, lungs, skin, ears, throat and abdomen, as well as measure body temperature; Datos, a big data platform and app that allows for continuous contact with patients and leverages patient-generated health data for care delivery; and EarlySense, which developed a clipboard-sized sensor that can be embedded in any mattress to monitor sleep, vital signs, and motion, leveraging AI and big data analytics to help clinicians in early detection of patient deterioration
“As Israel welcomes home its citizens from the Diamond Princess cruise who have been directly affected by the coronavirus, Tyto Care is honored to be working with Sheba Medical Center to provide the safest, highest quality medical care to the patients during the quarantine period to help stem the spread of the virus,” said Dedi Gilad, Tyto Care CEO and co-founder. Each of the 12 patients will receive a Tyto Care device to perform comprehensive medical examinations on themselves which “will provide Sheba staff the clinical data they require to make fully informed decisions from a safe distance, without physical exposure to the patients or any contact between the patients.”
“Our solution ensures complete isolation without sacrificing the quality of medical care, preventing further escalation during this critical time,” added Gilad.
Dr. Galia Barkai, director of tele-medicine services at Sheba said, “Datos’ solution can help us greatly reduce this risk by enabling us to monitor less severe patients outside the hospital …with the telemedicine app enabling us to communicate with them via video whenever necessary.”
Professor Arnon Afek, deputy director-general of the Sheba Medical Center and the director of Sheba’s General Hospital said: “We are using some of the world’s most sophisticated high-tech tele-medicine applications taken from our startup ecosystem at Sheba and Israel, using sensors, robots, hand-held devices in order to minimize exposure to our medical staff. The goal is to make our returning citizens feel comfortable in an environment where they will know that all of their needs will be taken care of.”
Professor Afek said the hospital will be doing its utmost “to minimize and eliminate the danger to the public by isolating the returning Israeli citizens,” and is had been preparing for a potential outbreak in the country.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
For thousands of years, microscopes have allowed scientists, doctors, and lab professionals to view enlarged images of small objects, cells, bacteria, and other agents that cannot be seen by the naked eye, for the purpose of analysis and examination. Since the invention of the first microscope around 1590, these devices have come a long way, allowing for varying levels of magnifying power and producing images of different types and resolutions. The “world’s most advanced microscope” is said to be able to probe the spaces between atoms.
But microscopes – specifically modern research ones called compound microscopes – remain largely analog devices.
Augmentiqs, an Israeli startup founded in 2016 and based in the northern city of Misgav, seeks to bring microscopes into the modern millennium by turning these medical instruments into augmented reality (AR) devices that will allow for smart, real-time digital pathology.
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Pathology is the branch of medical science that involves the study and diagnosis of disease through the examination of certain aspects of the body. The microscope is still the instrument of choice for pathologists.
For digital pathology, a sub-field of pathology that focuses on data management based on information generated from digitized specimen slides, virtual microscopy – posting microscope image on, and transmitting them over, computer networks – is the preferred method of examination.
More specifically, Augmentiqs’ digital pathology solution embraces and enhances the existing microscope, helping pathologists work more effectively, connect remotely with colleagues, and conduct groundbreaking research, the company says.
Augmentiqs’ system is integrated into an existing microscope, connecting it to a PC and transforming it into a smart interactive device that offers a cost-effective alternative to digital pathology, according to the company. This enables real-time examination through the augmented projection of what the microscope eyepiece actually sees.
For pathologists, the platform drastically improves what microscopes have to offer to generate a pathology that is cheaper, faster, and more accurate.
“We came up with a low-cost solution for a digital microscope that doesn’t change the microscope, but enhances it, by providing capabilities of a computer straight to the microscope,” Siegel explains.
From traditional tech to ‘smart’ tech
Siegel says it was the level of distrust he experienced from pathologists at trade shows while working for a different digital pathology company that made him realize digital pathology tech needed to be improved.
Augmentiqs system combined with traditional microscope. Courtesy
“A pathologist comes over and says, ‘In 90 percent of instances, I don’t need you. And in 10 percent, I don’t trust you.’ It was experiences like these that made us realize that the digital pathology tech out there doesn’t fit the needs of the pathologists,” Siegel tells NoCamels.
Augmentiqs sought to revolutionize the digital pathology industry.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
An Israeli machine learning-based system is helping a leading local healthcare organization identify patients who run a high risk of developing complications from the flu, or influenza, which has hit Israel especially hard this year.
This article was originally posted by NoCamels.com. See Featured article: Artificial Intelligence.
Medial EarlySign, a Hod Hasharon-based company, announced this month that it was chosen by Maccabi Healthcare Services, Israel’s second-largest HMO with over two million patients, as part of its strategy to enhance its flu vaccination campaign. Maccabi will use Medial EarlySign’s flu complications algorithm to flag individuals at high risk of developing flu-related conditions as part of a joint clinical study.
Founded in 2009, Medial EarlySign uses machine-learning solutions to build clinical insights for healthcare organizations based on electronic health records. The company’s technology has been used in studies to identify and stratify prediabetic patients at high risk for progressing to diabetes within a year, to predict which sufferers of diabetes will develop kidney dysfunction within a one-year time-frame. Medial EarlySign also previously partnered with Maccabi in 2016 to identify individuals at high risk of colorectal cancer who are non-compliant with screening guidelines.
As part of the current partnership, Medial EarlySign’s flu complications algorithm will use Maccabi’s EHR (electronic health records) data to identify and stratify unvaccinated individuals at high risk of developing flu-related complications which often require hospitalization.
The aim of the joint project is two-fold, Medial EarlySign co-founder Ori Geva tells NoCamels. “First, Maccabi will be able to figure out which individuals run a high risk of having complications from the flu and will be able to reach out to them specifically. And second, it gives us insights to better build our model.”Geva indicated that Medial EarlySign is engaged in a similar partnership in the US with Kaiser Permanente, a healthcare consortium with over 12 million members.
The company created a customized model of its platform for Israel, Geva tells NoCamels, and the project began in September. Maccabi will work with Medial EarlySign’s system through the flu season which has been quite harsh this year, by all Health Ministry indications.
Israel’s flu outbreak in numbers
In a December press announcement, the Israeli Health Ministry said cases of patients with flu-like symptoms started appearing across the country two weeks earlier than the previous flu season in 2018-2019. Since early last month, there has been an uptick in patients seeking treatment for flu-like symptoms including chest infections, a flu complication, and more patient samples testing positive for various flu strains than the previous year.
Among patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI), the rate of positive samples for influenza has also risen in recent weeks, according to a Health Ministry report for the second week of January 2020. As for pneumonia, the most common flu complication, the rate of patients seeking treatment has also been high – higher than the multi-year average – though the ministry said it noted a decrease in January.
Of those 351 cases, 43 patients have died so far this flu season including five who were under 18, the Health Ministry reported. In the 2018-2019 flu season, the death toll was at 49, and the 2017-2018 season claimed 90 lives.
A Different Flu Season?
Professor Varda Shalev, director of KSM Kahn-Sagol-Maccabi Research and Innovation Institute, founded by Maccabi Healthcare Services. Generally speaking, the flu season in Israel this year has also been characterized by two key factors. One, the vaccination program led by Israeli HMOs began later than usual (mid-November) due to a delay in the approval of the vaccine by the World Health Organization, which prepares the shots every year on the basis of dominant strains that appear in the southern hemisphere and are then expected to reach the northern hemisphere. This meant that patients began getting their vaccines later while also facing a shortage.
Despite this, the vaccination rate has been higher compared to the same period last year, according to the Health Ministry, but still rather low overall. As of January 15, 2020, about 2,100,000 people received the vaccine (about 23 percent of the population, compared to about 18 percent last year).
The second factor involves strains. According to the Health Ministry, the dominant influenza strain this year has been H1N1, otherwise known as “swine flu.”
“H1N1 is an especially nasty virus and is known to be quite aggressive,” Professor Varda Shalev, director of KSM Kahn-Sagol-Maccabi Research and Innovation Institute, tells NoCamels. In a statement announcing the partnership with Maccabi, Shalev said the strain “could take a heavier toll this season, particularly on people at high risk for flu complications,” adding that the flu kills “between 250,000 and 500,000 people globally every year.”
Other factors may have also led to this harsher flu season.
Professor Hagai Levine, an epidemiologist at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Chairman of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians, says it could also be a combination of factors including possibly “climate change as we observed change in interseasonal intensity in Australia, maybe late vaccination, maybe just normal changes,” he tells NoCamels via email.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Israeli cannabis startup Seedo, the company that has developed a fully-automated indoor medical cannabis grow device, has signed US rapper and cannabis icon Snoop Dogg as a brand ambassador.
The Israeli company said in a statement on Tuesday that Snoop, né Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., will work with Seedo “on a variety of platforms” to “achieve optimal consumer awareness of this innovative technology.”
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Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Learn more about Diane Israel. Also, see Diane Israel on LinkedIn.
Founded in 2013, Seedo developed a fully automated and controlled indoor growing device, resembling a mini-fridge, for pesticide-free agriculture markets with a first focus on cannabis but with wider applications. The product analyzes growth and optimizes conditions for cannabis and other plants for home and commercial use. Monitoring occurs via smartphone app.
Seedo says the device can grow the cannabis plant from seed stage without human intervention over the course of 90 days, making for an independently run cannabis growing operation. The machine weighs between 120-140 pounds (54-63 kg) and measures 40 by 24.4 by 24.4 inches (101 x 62 x 62cm), with units listed at $2,400 each. Seedo says its AI-powered turnkey systems allow anyone, “from average consumers to large-scale producers” to grow a variety of plants at lab-grade quality “without prior experience or ample space.”
Snoop Dogg – whose hits include the track “Smoke Weed Every Day” – said: “Promoting a healthier lifestyle by providing my friends and communities with products that allow for growth in unused urban spaces is something I’m all the way down with.”
“Seedo creates cost savings and the opportunity for all people to benefit from agricultural technologies,” added the rapper, a mega-star and cannabis advocate whose marijuana use is a big part of his public image and his music. In 2012, when Snoop Dogg was briefly known as Snoop Lion, he told a Reddit audience in an AMA – ask me anything – post that he smokes about 81 blunts per day.
And in an interview last week, he revealed that he employs a full-time “blunt roller” who he pays between $40,000 to $50,000 per year, and whose sole responsibility is to prepare Snoop’s preferred marijuana delivery system.
His social media presence, with 36 million followers on Instagram alone, is filled with cannabis memes and references. Snoop Dogg is also a long-time cannabis entrepreneur. In 2015, he co-founded the media organization Merry Jane, which focuses on news about cannabis, and launched a new line of cannabis products called Leafs by Snoop offering a range of flowers, concentrates, and edibles.
Seedo CEO Zohar Levy said the company was “honored to partner with an industry icon like Snoop Dogg.”
“Snoop’s vast global following, industry influence and network reach will provide us an invaluable resource for Seedo as we continue to grow. The synergy between Seedo’s products and Snoop’s platforms is truly natural,” Levy added.
This article was originally sourced by NoCamels.com. The cannabis plant is one of humanity’s oldest cultivated crops and its use as medicine goes back nearly 5,000 years in civilizations throughout China, India, and the Middle East.
Nowadays, cannabis continues to be used for a wide range of medicinal purposes. CBD, or cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive chemical produced by the cannabis plant, is believed to comprise anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, and painkilling properties and its benefits including believing insomnia, anxiety, and nausea, and treating symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and autism in children
The disorder occurs when tissue that normally lines the uterus – the endometrium – begins to grow outside the organ. The displaced tissue becomes trapped inside the body, as it reacts as it should by thickening and then bleeding but, unlike in the uterus, it has no way out. This causes a build-up of scar tissue and adhesions which bring on a variety of symptoms, including painful menstruation and intercourse, excessive bleeding, and can even lead to infertility.
The new research into the use of cannabis to treat endometriosis is led by Jerusalem-based startup Gynica, a medical company licensed by the Israeli Health Ministry to develop cannabis-based products for the female body, in cooperation with Lumir Lab, the first and only licensed facility to research cannabis as it relates to women’s health. It is based at the Jerusalem Biotechnology Park at Hebrew University.
Gynica says current treatments for endometriosis – with painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs – are often insufficient, as they only target the pain, not prevent it.
“Today, the ways to treat endometriosis are either surgery or medications, such as a pill that suppresses the secretion the hormones or pain-killers. Cannabis is a very different mechanism. It has several compounds that can treat multiple symptoms of the disease,” Dr. Sari Sagiv, VP of Research and Development at Gynica, tells NoCamels.
Gynica’s research in a pre-clinical study focuses on how endometriosis interacts with the endocannabinoid system, the natural cannabis-like molecules produced by the human body. This system is involved “in a wide variety of processes, including pain, memory, mood, appetite, stress, sleep, metabolism, immune function, and reproductive function,” according to a series of short articles on UCLA Health.
Gynica references the British Journal of Pharmacology to note that, after the brain, the female reproductive system is the organ with the most endocannabinoid receptors, and notes that it believes “cannabinoids are the missing piece in the treatment of gynecological disorders.”
Gynica’s R&D team maintains that endometriosis is linked to a deficiency in the endocannabinoid system and that cannabinoid-based treatments may offer a new and improved solution for women who suffer from the condition.
The pre-clinical study is led by Professor Lumir Ondrej Hanus, the world-renown chemist who in 1992 isolated the first known endocannabinoid in the human brain, and for whom Lumir Lab is named. The study, Gynica says, has shown “promising results.”
A clinical trial, slated for 2020, will be led by Gynica’s principal investigator and global leading endometriosis specialist Dr. Yuval Kaufman.
Dr. Sagiv, who will run R&D on the trial, says she expects to have a validated product sometimes over the next year, with efforts currently directed towards discovering the optimal strain of cannabis for treating endometriosis. The research is supervised by Professor Moshe Hod, a world-recognized expert in the field of women’s health, president of the European Association of Perinatal Medicine (EAPM), and professor of Gynecology at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Medicine.
“Endometriosis is a complex disease – to simply say ‘cannabis treats it’ is not enough,” she says. Gynica must find and understand the perfect combination and mixture of cannabis compounds. Once the optimal combination is found, Dr. Sagiv says a product will be released in several forms, including creams and patches.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Learn more about Diane Israel. Also, see Diane Israel on LinkedIn.
Israeli Biotech company Bonus Biogroup has created
The following excerpts were first reported by NoCamels.com.
When Danny Yaakobson, an extreme sports enthusiast, suffered a serious leg injury following a car accident two years ago, he did not imagine he would become the world’s first patient to receive a lab-grown bone implant made from his own fat cells to replace a missing section of his shinbone, let alone take part in an Israman triathlon just a year following the surgery.
But that is exactly what happened. While traveling abroad in 2017, Yaakobson suffered a road accident and nearly lost his whole leg. The injury was serious and painful, he says, but his doctor told him about a clinical trial that would change the course of his life.
“The doctor said that there wasn’t much to lose anyway [in participating in the clinical trial], that the situation was not so good as it was,” Yaakobson explains in a video interview provided by Bonus BioGroup.
During the process, human fat tissue is extracted from the patient. Bonus BioGroup then separates the various types of cells and isolates the stem cells. The stem cells are removed and stimulated in a bioreactor, a special device that simulates the body’s environment and provides suitable conditions for bone generation. The fat cells are then grown in a lab until the tissue becomes solid, after which the hardened bone tissue is injected back into the patient’s body.
Bonus BioGroup CEO Dr. Shai Meretzki says in a video interview that “currently an autologous [cells or tissues obtained from the same individual] transplant is the gold standard for treating patients who lose bones for a wide variety of reasons. In order to perform the process you need to harvest the bone for one location within the body. Usually you cut from the femur and move it to the cut location, which is a very hard, expensive, painful and difficult process.”
“What we are offering instead is a completely new approach to patients who have lost their bones for the most disparate reasons, growing the old bone outside of the human body within a relatively short time,” Meretzki says.
The surgery to replace a missing 2 inches (5 centimeters) of
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Learn more about Diane Israel. Also, see Diane Israel on LinkedIn.
Israeli Medtech startup Zebra Medical brings artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically detect brain anomalies. It’s like the optical character recognition (OCR) used to recognize words or other symbols when scanning a document. That’s basically how
The following content was first reported by NoCamels.com
Israeli startup Zebra Medical Vision will begin deploying its revolutionary medical imaging AI solutions in one of Israel’s largest hospitals, Tel Aviv’s Ichilov, as well as with Clalit Health Services and Maccabi Healthcare Services – Israel’s largest and second-largest HMO, respectively. The three medical entities manage some 90 percent of patients in Israel, the company said in a statement.
Zebra Medical said it received government support through grants from the Israel Innovation Authority for these projects, but did not disclose financial details.
See related story on artificial intelligence.
The company, founded in 2014 by Eyal Toledano, Eyal Gura, and Elad Benjamin, uses AI to read medical scans and automatically detect anomalies. Through its innovative development and use of 11 different algorithms, Zebra Medical can identify visual symptoms for diseases such as breast cancer, osteoporosis, fatty liver, and conditions such as vertebral fractures, aneurysms, and brain bleeds.
At Ichilov, also known as the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, which runs Israel’s largest ER section, the technology will prioritize radiologists’ worklists by scanning entire queues and flagging those that need immediate attention, thereby allowing those with life-threatening issues to be attended to more quickly.
“Emergency room patients will have their cases prioritized by AI, and if a CT scan includes a brain bleed or if a chest x-ray contains an acute condition such as pneumothorax, the patient’s imaging scan will be prioritized and placed at the top of the radiologist’s list for review, leading to earlier initiation of treatment,”
wrote Eyal Gura, Zebra Medical Vision’s co-founder and CEO, in a post announcing the partnerships.
Women who are members of the Maccabi HMO and patients of its private medical centers, meanwhile, may undergo their annual mammography exams where both expert radiologists and AI algorithms review the scans. This is in a bid to increase chances of any cancer detection earlier, and reduce unnecessary biopsies and risks of misdiagnoses.
“Traditional Computer Assisted Diagnosis (CAD) technologies failed in the past by exposing too many false positives and we are hopeful that AI can bring new insight to the process of the ‘second-reading’ of scans,” Gura wrote.
At the Clalit HMO, Zebra will apply its technology to detect early signs of osteoporosis and heart disease in patients and alert physicians who can then apply preventative treatments.
Gura explains that the benefits will also apply to caregivers, who can work more effectively and quickly to provide care, and to the state which can manage a better healthcare budget and
“Every patient with an undetected acute condition such as brain bleed, pneumothorax, or other undetected conditions such as breast cancer, ends up (in the best case scenario) with more days hospitalized, requiring more expensive treatments, with more working days lost and a greater lack of productivity for his or her surrounding family and direct contacts,”
Gura wrote.
Gura said the company was “humbled by the opportunity” and remained
“committed to providing the best solutions to our local care providers”
“In 2020, the majority of the people around us, including our loved ones, will be impacted by the tools we are creating,” he said in the company statement. “There is nothing more satisfying than that for our team.”
The Israel Innovation Authority’s CEO Aharon Aharon said the government agency “believes digital health to be of imperative and strategic growth engine for the entire Israeli economy,” and that Zebra Medical Vision’s participation in the program “represents the flagship that will help[…] substantiate and promote digital health in Israel.”
Professor Ronni Gamzu, CEO of Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, said: “As a global leading ER center, we put significant emphasis on being on the cutting edge in terms of technology solutions that will empower our team. We selected Zebra-Med’s AI solutions to help our team perform faster and better diagnostics and we are certain that hundreds of thousands of patients will benefit from this new technology.”
Zebra Medical has seven CE marks for its various algorithms and 510(k) FDA clearance for one of them. It has raised over $50 million in venture funding since it was established five years ago.
In 2017, Zebra Medical partnered with multinational tech giant Google to provide its algorithms on Google Cloud, so hospitals and medical professionals in the US can access the service for $1 per scan. The company says its data and research platform has already yielded AI imaging insights for millions of scans.
The award-winning company has also been recognized as particularly innovative by Business Insider, Forbes, and Fast Company.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Learn more about Diane Israel. Also, see Diane Israel on LinkedIn.
The more marijuana is put under the microscope, the more benefits become evident. The latest comes from an Israeli study showing that marijuana reduces symptoms in children suffering from Autism
The remainder of this article was originally reported in NoCamels.com
A new Israeli scientific study has shown that the use of medical cannabis in children under 18 diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can relieve common symptoms such as seizures, disruptive behaviors, depression, and restlessness.
ASD is a range of neurological disorders that affect communication, behavior, and social skills, and for which there is no specific treatment. According to the World Health Organization, it affects 1 in 160 children worldwide and over the past three decades, there has been a 3-fold increase in the number of children diagnosed, according to the study. Interventions often focus on intensive behavioral therapies that require high levels of care.
The Israeli study was conducted by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and the Soroka University Medical Center, among them Professor Raphael Mechoulam, the renown organic chemist who in 1964 was the first to identify cannabis’ THC compound, the chemical known for causing a “high.” Mechoulam is credited with laying the foundation for scientific research on cannabis and its use in modern medicine.
In the new study, titled “Real life Experience of Medical Cannabis Treatment in Autism: Analysis of Safety and Efficacy” and published in the scientific journal Nature…
researchers found that over 80 percent of the parents of the children in the study reported significant or moderate improvement in their child.
The treatment in the majority of the 188 child patients was based on cannabis oil containing 30 percent CBD (Cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive chemical produced by the cannabis plant) and 1.5 percent THC.
All the children in the study, ranging in age from under 5 to 18, were previously diagnosed with ASD by certified neurologist or psychiatrist, as required by Ministry of Health prior to the initiation of the cannabis-based treatment.
The patients were assessed before the cannabis oil treatment, after a month of treatment, and after six months of treatment.
After a month, with 179 patients, 58 patients (48.7 percent) reported significant improvement, 37 (31.1 percent) moderate improvement; 7 patients (5.9 percent) experienced side effects and 17 (14.3 percent) reported that the cannabis did not help them. The side effects they reported included sleepiness (1.6 percent), bad taste and smell of the oil (1.6 percent), restlessness (0.8 percent), reflux (0.8 percent) and lack of appetite (0.8 percent).
After six months, with 155 patients and 93 respondents to a follow-up questionnaire on the treatment, 30.1 percent reported significant improvement, 53.7 percent moderate improvement, 6.4 percent slight improvement, and 8.6 percent said that saw no change in their condition.
The patients also reported that after 6 months of treatment, their quality of life improved (66.8 percent) and 63.5 percent noted a more positive mood. There was also a marked improvement in the ability to dress and shower independent (42.9 percent) and sleep better (24.7 percent).
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Learn more about Diane Israel. Also, see Diane Israel on LinkedIn.
True. Good ole Aloe Vera does a great job for the occasional burn from a hot stove, or the many scrapes kids seem to attract. The natural bovine treatment of Colostrum also does a bang up job for all types of open wounds. But until now, severe burn victims had to undergo months (if not years) of painful bandage wraps.
The new wound care treatment has a few advantages over traditional wound treatment. For starters, the treatment never touches the wound which reduces infection. In addition, no bandages are needed. Anyone who has undergone large scale burns know all-too-well the pain and suffering of having their bandages applied and basically ripped off the skin on a daily basis.
The following content was originally reported by NoCamels.com
Israeli-developed laser technologies are also sought after to help reduce the devastating impact of scars in burn victims.
“This is one of the birthplaces of laser medicine. You have doctors here who think innovation, it’s in their blood. It is a very exciting environment to work in,” US-based Burn Advocates Network founder Samuel Davis, tells NoCamels.
Davis was in town this week for the inauguration of the Israel Pediatric Aesthetic and Reconstructive Laser Surgery Center of Excellence (I-PEARLS), which he founded to be part of the National Burn Center at Sheba Medical Center.
Prof. Josef Haik, the Director of Israel’s National Burn Center Intensive Care Unit at Sheba Medical Center, and Prof. Arie Orenstein, director of the Sheba Medical Center Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, worked closely with Davis to develop this first center in the Middle East focused on non-invasive methods to heal scars.
In Israel, burns are the most common injuries among children (and especially in winter), according to the Ministry of Health. In 2017, 3,286 children were treated for burn wounds at emergency wards and Terem clinics, according to the latest data by the Ministry of Health
“Laser treatments have been around for years but somehow kids with burn scars got left out of the focus. When you take innovative clinicians and you put them together with the latest equipment, good things happen,” says Davis, a philanthropist from New Jersey who is also the founder of Camp Sababa, Israel’s camp for pediatric burn survivors.
“Sheba has a tradition of bringing catastrophic burn cases from Greece, Syria, Africa, the Palestinian Authority areas and from all over the region. This will just increase and expand the ability of the doctors to accept patients and teach physicians and surgeons in foreign countries. It increases the capability of Sheba to do its mission,” says Davis. “The center is already training doctors from other countries and we’re laying the groundwork to export I-PEARLS techniques.”
Indeed, Israel’s name as an innovator in the burn treatment space is sought out, agrees Barak, of Nanomedic.
“Israel is a source of a lot of innovation. All the physicians and companies with whom we’ve been in touch appreciate the innovative approach we have here,” she says.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Learn more about Diane Israel. Also, see Diane Israel on LinkedIn.