Netanyahu Touts Plans to Build a National Personalized Health System in Meeting with SAP CEO

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed a plan to build a national personalized health system in Israel during a Thursday meeting with Bill McDermott, CEO of multinational enterprise software company SAP SE. Mssers. Netanyahu and McDermott met in Davos, Switzerland during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum there.

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Mr. Netanyahu had offered Mr. McDermot to collaborate on the unnamed project, and Mr. McDermott accepted, as seen in video footage of the meeting, shared later that day by the Prime Minister’s Office.

Following the meeting, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement saying that the new digital health project will be allocated a budget of $295 million (NIS 1 billion) over a five-year period, and that it would be submitted to the government for approval in the coming weeks.

In a post to his official Facebook page on Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu discussed the meeting. “I revealed to the CEO of SAP, the largest software company in Europe and one of the largest in the world, a project that we are currently undertaking in the field of digital health,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “This is an initiative that I am promoting with the goal of creating another engine of growth for Israel. Israel is the world's pioneer in this field. I am happy to inform you that the revolution is on its way.” With almost 90 thousand employees in over 130 countries, Walldorf, Germany-based SAP is the fourth largest software company in the world. SAP employs more than 700 people in its research and development center in Israel.

This is not the first time Mr. Netanyahu mentions the unnamed digital health project. In a June 2016 meeting with John Chambers, then-CEO of Technology conglomerate Cisco Systems, Inc., Messrs. Netanyahu and Chambers signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on a digitization project related to the Israeli health system.