According to Avishai Abrahami, founder of website builder Wix, Israeli start-ups have a surprising secret weapon - helpful connections with established companies, even competitors! Israeli entrepreneurs regularly help newcomers, because these entrepreneurs originally received help themselves. Nothing exists in isolation in the Jewish State and the theme of “connections” links all of the following recent news articles.
Israel has built links with top hospitals
and medical institutions around the world.
Experts from Boston Medical Center trained Israeli surgeons at Rambam
Medical Center in Haifa to use
surgical robots to perform advanced pediatric surgery. For the first time, they used Rambam’s da
Vinci robot to correct congenital defects on Israeli children.
Israel’s Dr. Nizam Razack also connected
with US surgeons and robots when he performed the world’s first robotic
brain surgery. At Celebration Health
Hospital in Orlando, Florida. Dr Razack used the Renaissance robotic guidance
system from Israel’s Mazor Robotics to perform successful deep brain
stimulation (DBS) on a Parkinson’s sufferer.
In another US medical collaboration, researchers at Tel Aviv University
and Chicago’s Northwestern University worked
together to discover that a mutation in skin cell molecules disrupts
the immune response and triggers allergic reactions.
Dr. Ayelet Erez used her connections from
studying and working at the Technion, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv
University, Baylor College Texas and the Weizmann Institute to
uncover the link between the enzyme ASL and Nitrous Oxide, which is
essential for regulating blood pressure.
Meanwhile, Ariel Munitz of Tel Aviv University has discovered
a link between cancer and white blood cells called macrophages. A particular stimulus will make them heal
cancer and fibrosis. But a different stimulus actually makes the condition
worse. But potentially Israel’s most
important medical connections are contained in Israel’s "National Network of
Excellence" (NNE) in Neuroscience. Established by Israel’s Teva, NNE has just granted funds to 46
scientists at seven Israeli universities and teaching hospitals to boost therapeutic
developments for Alzheimer’s, MS, dementia and other brain diseases.
Israelis are also very good at breaking
unhelpful connections. Why, for
instance, do aerosols need to contain dangerous compressed gases and be stored
in expensive, metallic, cylindrical containers? Israeli startup GreenSpense has developed an eco-friendly system
for dispensing liquid
products. A thin elastic sleeve inside the product generates high
pressure, which is released at a touch of a button. Another connectivity problem is solved by Israeli start-up
Pressy. Sometimes you have to perform
many laborious
connected functions on your smartphone before you can take a photo, or
order a pizza etc. Pressy provides “one
button to rule them all”, which you attach to the headphone socket of your
android device.
Some important international connections
were enhanced recently:
-
Chinese
investment in Israeli biotech NasVax will boost
development of treatments for fatty liver disease and Alzheimer’s.
-
Israel Chemicals announced it is to
mine phosphates in
Vietnam.
-
Israel’s Ormat Industries completed a
100mW geothermal power plant in
New Zealand.
-
The World
Bank is investing in Israel’s Kaiima, developing resilient and high
yield grain.
-
The world’s largest Muslim country, Indonesia,
is to use Israeli technology to build roads.
Staying with the international connection,
but on a lighter note, hundreds of
Hungarians at the Israeli festival in Budapest satisfied their hunger
on the largest bowl of Hummus that Hungary has ever seen. And international sporting links included
the signing by Scottish soccer champions Celtic of Israeli midfielder Nir Biton
from FC Ashdod. The 21-year-old will now
connect up with fellow countryman, Beram Kayal who already plays for
Celtic.
It is inspiring that there is an
Israeli connection at the top of so many International companies. According to Bloomberg Rankings, graduates
of Israel’s Technion Institute make up the seventh highest number of chief
executives of the top technical companies in the USA.
To conclude, here are two news items that
connect the modern Jewish State with its historical origins. Firstly, it may have been the phenomenal
number of recent ancient Biblical discoveries that persuaded Bar Ilan University
archaeologists to purchase a $70,000 handheld X-Ray Florescent Spectrometer to
go with the Fourier spectrometer already being used. The two devices now provide Bar-Ilan with the best
molecular analysis capabilities in the world. And finally, can you imagine Miriam Siebenberg’s surprise when
she uncovered connections going back 2,000 years in the form of an ancient
Jewish residence underneath her Jerusalem home. As Miriam says of the
Siebenberg House Museum, “Both my roots and
the roots of our people are right underneath this house.” It’s living history.
Stay connected for the next inspiring
installment.
Michael Ordman writes a free weekly
newsletter containing Good News stories about Israel.
For a free subscription, email a request to
michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com
