{"id":4065,"date":"2023-07-29T09:06:04","date_gmt":"2023-07-29T09:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/?post_type=article&p=4065"},"modified":"2023-12-06T07:59:38","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T07:59:38","slug":"monitoring-vital-signs","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/article\/monitoring-vital-signs\/","title":{"rendered":"Monitoring Vital signs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Gill Zaphrir worked for years in the field of military technology before turning to the business arena. He was a partner in a venture capital fund and led successful investments in the fields of enterprise software when four years ago he encountered the world of digital medicine and was captivated by its exciting and far-reaching possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Digital medicine is the future. It needs to be significantly more personal and accessible for everyone, all over the world but first and foremost for the people living in the periphery and in distant locations that lack professional medical services. The ability to maintain continuous surveillance and early testing enables better personalized, diagnostic and preventive medicine for all. The future is in the capability to construct a genetic physiological database, to maintain continuous surveillance and to provide treatment in time. The younger generation and those to come will no longer consume medical services in the manner we do today. Medical information is the foundation of future personalized medicine.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“As far as sources of finance and professional support is concerned, the field of digital medicine falls between the cracks. Historically, the investors were divided between internet and mobile mavens and those expert in the field of medical equipment. Digital medicine is a combination of these two fields and the investors are therefore faced with a very long learning process of the field as well as processes of regulatory adaptation. This is the reason that the early support of the Israel Innovation Authority is so critical.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There are two significant advantages in Israel that are worthwhile leveraging: the existence, for almost 25 years, of a digital database of labelled information in the central health funds and an openness to collaboration with start-up initiatives in the field. Labelled health information is an asset of importance on the national level. The second advantage is that because Israel is only a ‘small island’, it is easy to connect between the technological disciplines required in order to come up with solutions. The upshot is expertise in the analysis of medical data and in medical research and the ability to combine all these elements to data technologies and provide a closed solution in the patient-clinician environment.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I initiated an enterprise that exposes Israeli innovation in the field of digital medicine \u2013 an international meeting that takes place once a year. The meetings host all the country’s digital medicine experts, partners and strategic clients from three continents. The first conference was in December 2013 and we have been meeting every year since. The community has expanded to 500 members in the field of digital medicine and between 500-700 participants attend each conference. It has also become the central stage for exposure to and exchange of information in the national sphere.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zaphrir is currently involved in three companies active in the field. In one of them, ‘Bandmanage<\/strong>‘, he has progressed from investor to CEO. He tells us of its activity: “Bandmanage is a software company specializing in the analysis of personal physiological data. What we actually do is to transform sports watches with a variety of sensors into a system that tracks changes in the state of health of elderly people. The sensors measure heartbeat, acceleration, skin temperature and the skin’s electric conductivity. Our expertise lies in the capability to quickly monitor new physiological situations and enable the automatic cross-checking of information between patients.”<\/p>\n\n\n