Bio-convergence, the next technological trend of the 21st century, is a transdisciplinary field that merges engineering and life sciences and is set to revolutionize the health-tech industry. Bio-convergence fuses life sciences with different technologies from fields such as mathematics, engineering, and physical and computational sciences, creating a sum  far greater than the total of all its parts.

The Israel Innovation Authority recognizes Bio-convergence as a strategic field that will be instrumental in building the next economic growth engine in Israel, one that will encompass the entire innovation ecosystem, extensive academic activity, innovative industry, mature companies with extensive knowledge, foreign biopharma companies, manufacturing, and clinical trials conducted in Israel. The goal is to support the creation of large Israeli companies working on a global scale that will provide employment and engagement in a variety of professions other than data science and engineering, and which are currently employed at levels of low productivity. Furthering the development of this field will allow Israel to become a global powerhouse in the next transformative Bio-convergence revolution and one of the leaders of the future global healthtech industry.

The core principles of the proposed program are to accelerate technology transfer to local industry, build frameworks that will further academic knowledge, attract foreign companies to Israel, support startups, and establish additional collaborations with the local industry. An important part of the program is strengthening and focusing on applied (and basic) multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research in Israeli academia in order to preserve a global scientific advantage and advance the local innovation ecosystem towards the field of Bio-convergence.