{"id":67737,"date":"2019-02-20T17:05:44","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T15:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=67737"},"modified":"2019-02-12T16:06:30","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T14:06:30","slug":"19-05-37","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=67737","title":{"rendered":"10 Israeli companies scouring digital data to save our lives"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Israel21c\"<\/a>10 Israeli companies scouring digital data to save our lives<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Brian Blum<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Medical records image by Metamorworks via Shutterstock.com<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Making sense of the vast amount of data stored in our medical records and coming from the growing number of medical devices we use at home or in the hospital is a hot area for technological advances.<\/span><\/p>\n

Running artificial intelligence algorithms on health data collected via HMOs, wearable devices or hospitals can aid with diagnoses, suggest unexpected ailments and prevent fatal complications.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel has a cluster of startups doing exactly that. ISRAEL21c looks at 10 of the most promising.<\/span><\/p>\n

1. MonitHer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jerusalem-based startup MonitHer doesn\u2019t have a website yet, but we suspect it won\u2019t be long: The company, founded by American immigrant to Israel Yehudit Abrams, won the $360,000 grand prize at the WeWork Creator Awards in Jerusalem in June 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

MonitHer is developing an ultrasound device that can be used by women at home to monitor for abnormalities in breast tissue. Women using the device will scan their breasts once a month for about 10 minutes. Software then monitors the images, looking for any changes over time. The images are also uploaded to MonitHer\u2019s servers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once MonitHer has more than 100,000 users, artificial intelligence and machine learning will be able to compare tissue images in a woman\u2019s offline MonitHer medical record with those in the cloud. The result: increased chances of early detection compared with monthly self-exams and more frequent scans than an annual mammogram at a much lower cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are changing the paradigm from breast cancer screening to breast health monitoring,\u201d Abrams says.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. MaxQ AI<\/strong><\/p>\n

A patient is admitted to the emergency room with a head injury. The care team will send the patient for a head CT to assess the possibility of a stroke or intracranial hemorrhage. That scan will become part of the patient\u2019s permanent medical record. But meanwhile, doctors need to act fast because for every minute that passes, brain cells die.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s one reason why Tel Aviv-based MaxQ AI (formerly known as MedyMatch) was granted an \u201cExpedited Access Pathway and Breakthrough Device\u201d designation by the US FDA earlier this year. The company\u2019s artificial intelligence-based Accipio software platform uses deep-learning technologies to alert physicians automatically of a potential brain bleed.<\/span><\/p>\n

MaxQ AI has already signed agreements with IBM Watson, GE Healthcare and Samsung Electronics. Accipio received FDA clearance in November 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Aidoc<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aidoc automatically pinpoints <\/em><\/span>
\nareas of concern on the CT scan.<\/em><\/span>
\n Photo: courtesy<\/em><\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

Aidoc takes what MaxQ AI does for head injuries and applies it to CT scans of all kinds. The company\u2019s software uses artificial intelligence to help radiologists catch serious issues in real time. By comparing a fresh scan with the 300,000 patient images that have already been analyzed, Aidoc\u2019s \u201calways-on AI\u201d displays an alert on the radiologist\u2019s computer screen immediately if an abnormality is detected.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe radiologist doesn\u2019t have to click anything for this to happen,\u201d the company\u2019s CEO Eyal Walach told ISRAEL21c. That led TIME magazine to place the two-year-old company on its list of \u201c50 genius companies of 2018\u201d and has helped the company raise $13 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aidoc says it has saved radiologists some 50,000 hours of work and flagged 140,000 abnormalities. X-rays and MRI analysis will be added in 2019. The company has already received US and European approval to assess scans of brain hemorrhages and spinal fractures.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. ART Medical<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you are connected to a ventilator in the hospital ICU, your chance of contracting ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP) is 25 percent. VAP develops because, along with the ventilator, a patient must be hooked up to a feeding tube where gastric content from the stomach can flow into the lungs due to reflux and aspiration. Ten percent of patients with VAP never recover.<\/span>
\nART Medical\u2019s advanced sensor-based feeding-tube solution enables automated and real-time intervention to avoid intubation-related medical complications. Photo: courtesy<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

ART Medical has developed smart feeding tubes laden with sensors that automatically collect patient data including reflux rates, food requirements, saliva and urine output to adjust the nutritional doses delivered through the tube. The eight-year-old company has raised $29 million to develop its Anti-Reflux Tube (that\u2019s where the \u201cART\u201d comes from).<\/span><\/p>\n

The company\u2019s algorithms also automate the placement of feeding tubes in the stomach \u2013 a process that currently must be done through X-ray imaging \u2013 as well as provide real-time monitoring to assure the tubes stay in place. ART Medical has been collaborating over the past year with hospitals in Israel and the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Clew Medical<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two years ago, Gal Salomon\u2019s mother developed sepsis during a stay in the hospital and died. \u201cIt was a big hospital with a lot of patients and no one saw or understood it was happening,\u201d Salomon recalls.<\/span><\/p>\n

Salomon now heads Clew Medical, which develops software that uses artificial intelligence to predict which patients in a hospital\u2019s ICU are at the highest risk of imminent deterioration, and alerts staff so they can intervene early.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clew\u2019s software connects to the ICU\u2019s systems \u2013 for example, those that track blood pressure and heart rate \u2013 and pairs it with data from a patient\u2019s electronic medical record as well as data in the cloud that Clew has collected on patients with similar conditions. Clew can predict how long a patient will need to be connected to a ventilator or a dialysis machine, and when a patient will be ready for discharge.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company is testing its software at Sheba and Ichilov hospitals in Israel, and the Mayo and Cleveland clinics in the United States. Clew has raised $30 million since it was founded in 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n

6. Nucleai<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever had a biopsy taken to check for cancer or a gastrointestinal disease, you know that waiting for results \u2013 which can take anywhere from a few days to a month \u2013 can be nerve-racking. Disease diagnosis is performed by pathologists who must examine the tissues and cells taken from the biopsy manually under a microscope.<\/span><\/p>\n

Avi Veidman, a veteran of an Israeli intelligence unit specializing in computer vision, wondered if the kind of software his team had developed for decoding aerial and satellite images could work for detecting patterns on a cellular level. He started Nucleai with two other veterans of the same IDF unit in 2017 to make the painstaking work of pathologists faster and more accurate and, as a result, reduce patients\u2019 wait times.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nucleai\u2019s software also factors in information drawn from patients\u2019 medical records and their genomics data. The company has raised $5 million and is working on a prototype with a pilot expected to launch in the coming months.<\/span><\/p>\n

7. Medial EarlySign<\/strong><\/p>\n

Medial\u2019s algorithms analyze the data in a patient\u2019s electronic health record to identify those at high risk for specific medical conditions. There\u2019s no need to connect Medial\u2019s software to an ICU system or a CT machine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Medial\u2019s first product, ColonFlag, uses its AlgoAnalyzer operating system to identify patients who might develop colorectal cancer by looking at their blood-test results, age and gender; it\u2019s now being used in Israel by the Maccabi HMO. Of 80,000 patients evaluated in 2017, 690 were marked as high risk, with 20 cases of cancer confirmed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Medial is also applying its predictive models to detecting diabetes among pre-diabetic patients where early care could make a real difference in their quality of life. High-risk individuals are only 5% of the total patient population but account for 50% of healthcare costs. Medial is conducting clinical data studies in 14 sites in the US, Israel, Europe and Asia, comprising some 20 million patients.<\/span><\/p>\n

8. MilagroAI<\/strong><\/p>\n

MilagroAI does for hospital records what Medial EarlySign does for patients\u2019 individual electronic health records. Combining deep-learning algorithms and text analysis, Milagro can parse the 70% of medical information that\u2019s locked in unstructured data sources such as hospital documents and summaries of surgical and radiological procedures.<\/span><\/p>\n

Milagro says its technology turns \u201call the relevant trapped and noisy data into simple, clear and actionable real-time information about a patient.\u201d Medical staffers receive relevant alerts and the company\u2019s software identifies patients at the highest risk for hospital-acquired infections.<\/span><\/p>\n

Milago\u2019s software is in use at several Israeli medical centers including Sheba, Assuta, Rambam and Tel Aviv Sourasky. The company changed its name from OpiSoftcare earlier this year. Milagro is Spanish for \u201cmiracle.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

9. MedAware<\/strong><\/p>\n

The straw that broke the camel\u2019s back for Dr. Gidi Stein was when he encountered the case of a nine-year-old boy who was incorrectly prescribed an anti-coagulant instead of an asthma medicine. The boy fell off his bike and subsequently died as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Stein, who specializes in internal medicine, dug deeper, he discovered other cases: insulin prescribed to a patient without diabetes, chemotherapy given to a 28-year-old healthy male. Stein cofounded MedAware in response.<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

The company uses machine-learning algorithms and AI to prevent clinicians from issuing the wrong prescription. MedAware scours its database of millions of prescriptions and compares it to a patient\u2019s medical record to flag \u201cstatistical outliers to normal behavior patterns.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Using AI is key: other decision-support systems only alert physicians based on pre-programmed rules. During testing with 400,000 patients, MedAware turned up 6,000 incorrect prescriptions, \u201csome of which were life threatening,\u201d says Stein.<\/span><\/p>\n

MedAware, which has an accuracy of up to 80%, is installed at sites in the US and Israel, including Sheba Medical Center. The company, founded in 2012, has raised $12 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

10. Zebra Medical Vision<\/strong><\/p>\n

Making sense of radiology is becoming an Israeli specialty. Zebra Medical Vision, the most veteran firm on the imaging block, was founded in 2014 and is headquartered on a kibbutz. Its software parses patterns in medical images to identify diseases a radiologist might miss. Zebra\u2019s chest x-ray analytics product was \u201ctrained\u201d using 2 million images to help identify 40 common conditions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zebra charges its hospital clients $1 per image scanned \u2013 less than a medical center would have to pay a radiologist for the time spent. And the company\u2019s structured clinical dataset of millions of images is available for researchers to use.<\/span><\/p>\n

In November 2018, the company received FDA clearance for a coronary calcium scoring algorithm, critical in identifying heart disease. Zebra already has European CE approval for an additional seven algorithms. In June 2018, the company raised $30 million, bringing its total investment to $50 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Brian has been a journalist and high-tech entrepreneur for over 20 years. He combines this expertise for ISRAEL21c as he writes about hot new local startups, pharmaceutical advances, scientific discoveries, culture, the arts and daily life in Israel. He loves hiking the country with his family (and blogging about it). Originally from California, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and three children.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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10 Israeli companies scouring digital data to save our lives Brian Blum Medical records image by Metamorworks via Shutterstock.com Making sense of the vast amount of data stored in our medical records and coming from the growing number of medical devices we use at home or in the hospital is a hot area for technological […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67737"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67792,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67737\/revisions\/67792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}