Beilinson CEO: "Innovation is at the heart of Beilinson’s strategy”

צילום: שמוליק דודפור

"The developments that arise from the needs in the field, alongside enormous big data and a strong innovation center, position Beilinson towards the medicine of the future," said Dr. Eytan Wirtheim, CEO of Beilinson and Hasharon Hospitals, speaking at the Israel-Japan Conference in Tokyo on Tuesday.

Wirtheim presented the medical center's concept of innovation at the Israel-Japan Conference in Tokyo on Tuesday. "Innovation is at the heart of Beilinson’s strategy. We have turned the tables regarding everything that concerns the development of medical tools and applications. Instead of a technology giant designing a therapeutic tool and asking to cooperate with us, as part of the biodesign concept from Stanford on which our innovation activity is based, we work from the inside out, from the needs that arise from the field in the hospital corridors and clinics, through the innovation incubator, to the development of a new product that changes the picture."

According to Wirtheim, "When a staff member encounters a difficulty and a problem, then instead of putting it aside, we encourage them to highlight the need, and to think as creatively and as far as possible. They meet with the members of the internal innovation team that was established at the hospital and includes top professionals. These are people with a vision coming from the fields of AI, big data and 3D printing. There is great significance to the physical presence of an innovation team within the hospital. It shows the staff, visitors and patients that innovation is at the core of our activity."

Wirtheim emphasized that every product developed in Beilinson is based on the big data engine of Clalit Health Services. This is a huge database of medical files and MRI, CT and ultrasound images of the largest health organization in Israel and one of the largest in the world.

"With the help of this enormous big data, it is possible for us to perform different and varied segmentations that produce a huge field of work that results in 40 innovative projects a year," he said. "The combination of all these worlds produces a strong innovation system that attracts external entities, such as unit 8200 that recently joined Beilinson and with whom we opened a training program.”

As part of Beilinson’s strategy, Wirtheim noted that the medical center maintains collaborations with all the major technology companies, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple, with medical equipment giants such as Philips and Siemens, as well as with AI companies such as Aidoc and Nanox.

"Another layer of activity is with universities and training the future generation in the field of innovation," Wirtheim added. Among the institutions with which the hospital works: the Weizmann Institute, Tel Aviv University, Bar Ilan University, Ariel University and HIT. At Reichman University, students carry out the final projects of the master's degree in computer science in collaboration with Beilinson Hospital. These projects are based on medical data and artificial intelligence.

Wirtheim revealed some of Beilinson’s latest developments, including artificial intelligence cameras that detect when a hospitalized patient is about to have a stroke, an AI-directed needle that locates diseased tissue online during surgery, home monitors that warn of heart failure situations, and also a unique use of ChatGPT in hospital wards to alleviate patient loneliness.

"The ambition is that the connection between big data, the innovation incubator and the capabilities of our artificial intelligence will bring us excellent research that will eventually lead to commercial developments in addition to what we have already developed,” said Wirtheim. “On top of all of this we are adding another accelerator, which is education. We have set ourselves a goal, to give the teams very easy access to courses and training that will enable the use of big data and artificial intelligence, because anyone with a good idea can bring excellent results when they research a certain field."