Scene change today as we move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to explore MedTech, health and wellness

First stop was Alyn Paediatric Hospital an incredible facility with an amazing history of innovation dating back to the days when few countries would sell to Israel, so they had to make it themselves, roll forward to today and that culture is baked into the DNA with each and every child receiving bespoke treatment and if the mainstream aid or product doesn’t suit them, or doesn’t exist, the hospitals’ engineering department will alter or make one, that does.

They’ve recently taken this ingenuity to the next level and turned themselves into an innovation hub, attracting child specific health related start-ups, fostering and supporting them and partnering with them to commercialise.

Our next stop was to Hadassah Hospital’s BioHouse a specialist incubator for digital health and medical start-ups. This is the place that for decades has been the inventor of some of today’s most prescribed pharmaceutical drugs.

We heard from some of their current crop of “next big things” including water and milk analysers; fertility treatment with 66% surety in current trialling; a wearable IOT patch that is constantly monitoring and transmitting your vitals and then an insight from their Director into the future works and the scope of the hospital.

We were then treated to a tour of the hospital, visiting the state-of-the-art mother and child ward, the Marc Chagall windows, and a rare tour of the specialist emergency ward kept on standby 24/7 especially for mass tragedies and disasters that sits inside an underground bunker that is hermetically sealed, impenetrable by bomb or gas and has its own indefinite water and energy supplies – terrifying!

Orcam, a small wearable device attached to an ordinary pair of glasses and used by the visually impaired to read and interpret the world was our last stop for the day and such a thrill. I’ve been covering and speaking about them since their inception in 2010 and to finally meet them, sit in their offices and hear about their next gen iterations was such a hoot.

The night ended at Mechane Yehuda market soaking in the night life, eating and drinking with the locals – great way to end a long day.

That’s it for my daily report on innovation Israeli style, tomorrow we begin 2 days of cultural visits and events.

If you want to her more about my trade mission to Start Up Nation Israel, the discoveries, technologies, people, trends and my thoughts on what all this means for our future, message me for an invite to a webcast I’ll be running in a couple of weeks.

#WishYouWereHere #Innovation #Israel #Future #FuturistSpeaker #StartUp #SiliconValley