Prof. Leor Perl: Beilinson is establishing a virtual hospital

"October 7 changed our lives and the lives of our patients,” Prof. Leor Perl, head of innovation at Beilinson Hospital said at Calcalist and Bank Leumi’s Mind the Tech Conference in New York. “Tens of thousands of families lost their homes, even temporarily, and many were under missile attacks. Our ability to provide medical care changed dramatically. We had to stretch our limits in every sense. Our goal is to provide the best medical care everywhere.”

Prof. Perl added that the hospital faced these challenges in a variety of ways. For example, sending medical teams to meet the patients at their new location. "Due to the number of evacuees, the population of Eilat has doubled," he said. "We sent medical teams to provide services to patients in the hotels where they were staying, and this allowed us to provide continuity of care in various areas and strengthen the hospitals in Eilat and Be'er Sheva. At the same time, at our main campus in Petah Tikva, we received hundreds of wounded in our emergency room. We had to establish an emergency underground hospital protected from missile strikes and a new x-ray wing."

But one of the most important moves was the establishment of a virtual hospital. "This gave us the ability to bring experts and customized care directly to the patients' homes. In times of uncertainty, we need to do better. A virtual hospital makes it possible to provide full care through virtual meetings. The more challenging part is to provide services and medical care in the patient's home. This requires using breakthrough and advanced technologies. A virtual hospital also provides a better service experience. It is flexible, the patient can be anywhere. The patients were pleased that there is no need to waste time on transportation and parking, that you can meet with the doctor from home, from the office, even from abroad. Staff members also liked it and said their work was more efficient.

"Rehabilitation, for example, is a place where virtual possibilities provide real value. You can have a one-on-one meeting or group meetings with patients who are recovering from physical injuries or strokes. In speech therapy, you can have online meetings to set up and use medical devices. In terms of technologies, we use smartphones and wearable devices to collect information about patients. But a software platform is needed for this purpose. The Israeli company Datos is able to collect information from patients through these devices and send it to the hospital. Other devices make it possible to collect information on indicators such as blood pressure and temperature. If we thought that the war would end with the isolation of patients alone at home without medical treatment, the situation is just the opposite: the patients are at home, but surrounded by medical staff 24/7. And this is just the beginning. We will see many more such products and many more patients in the virtual hospital."

Watch his full remarks in the video above.