Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem and IBM Israel have announced the establishment of a special accelerator for startups in which the startups can develop advanced technological solutions and services in digital medicine. Startups that have completed a post-seed financing round will be eligible for the program.
The accelerator was announced at an event launching the eighth class of the IBM Alpha Zone accelerator, which operates in all of the IBM's fields of business in Israel. Alpha Zone also deals with digital medicine; the 45 Alpha Zone graduates include Nutrino, acquired this week by global company Medtronic.
The new accelerator, to be built by the LR group on the premises of the Biohouse technology incubator in the Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center, will also be supported by the Jerusalem Development Authority. The accelerator program, scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2019, will last six months. It will provide companies with easy access to hospital resources and medical and expert professional staff. IBM will provide technological advice from its experts and free access to its advanced technological tools, including hosting on IBM Cloud.
IBM has leading artificial intelligence (AI) solutions already developed specifically for medicine (including the Watson and Watson Health solutions). The company also has analytics, blockchain, cyber, and preservation of privacy tools and solutions.
Hadassah said that it had selected IBM to lead the program because IBM Alpha was a global leader with experience in digital medicine. For the medical center, closer ties with entrepreneurs for the purpose of promoting tomorrow's medical innovation and development will advance treatment of patients in the future at Hadassah and other hospitals around the world, Hadassah said.
Hadassah Medical Organization director general Prof. Zeev Rotstein said, "Working with IBM will propel development to the forefront of advanced medicine internationally, and constitute an additional element in realizing Hadassah's vision of leading the medicine of the future." Hadasit - the Technology Transfer Company of Hadassah Medical Organization CEO Dr. Tamar Raz said, "Through Hadasit, we will make clinical and research infrastructure accessible to companies in the program, as well as the hospital medical staff and professionals supporting various development aspects."
IBM Israel CTO Uri Hayik said, "We are excited about collaborating with Hadassah Medical Center on a pioneering and ground-breaking project. The synergy between Hadassah Medical Center's medical knowledge and information and IBM's technology experts will create medicine for the future." Biohouse CEO Shai Melcer said, "We are delighted to have the accelerator operated by IBM in Biohouse."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on November 29, 2018
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