Kira Radinsky’s Diagnostic Robotics has developed an AI-based platform to predict the spread of COVID-19 and triage patient

Article published at www.jewishinsider.com on April 01, 2020.

But Dr. Kira Radinsky, 33, is at the forefront of Israel’s battle against the novel coronavirus. And she’s hoping to share her new technology with the rest of the world as it fights the global pandemic.
Radinsky, the co-founder of digital health startup Diagnostic Robotics, has been working day and night to put the finishing touches on a digital platform that is a one-stop shop for managing the disease. Already this week, the company’s COVID360 platform is beginning to roll out in Israel, billed as an “end-to-end centralized solution for corona treatment.”

Diagnostic Robotics, co-founded in 2017 by Radinsky, Yonatan Amir and Moshe Shoham, has been working since its founding to produce a data-driven prediction platform to aid hospitals and medical clinics in their efforts to improve patient care.

But earlier this year, Amir realized the company needed to shift full time to helping tackle the growing global — and local — threat of coronavirus, Radinsky said.

“A month ago, we decided we want to convert our system to help Israel fight COVID,” Radinsky told Jewish Insider during a phone interview on Tuesday. Until recently, the company had been working on “triage systems driven by artificial intelligence to reduce healthcare loads,” targeted at always-overcrowded emergency rooms. They were just about to release the system, “and then COVID happened. And we decided that we’re going to convert the system to doing COVID triage.”

The new COVID360 platform starts at home — on smartphones to be exact — helping to both reduce the overload on the medical system and cut the risk of further spreading the infection. Rolled out in partnership with the Health Ministry and the four Israeli health care providers, the remote assessment tool is slated to reach every citizen of Israel.

“The way it works today, is there’s a text message being sent to all people with a questionnaire,” Radinsky said. Based on the information gathered about symptoms, daily interactions and location, “we create an epidemiological map for the decision makers.” That map helps the software “predict — using machine learning — how the disease is going to spread and in which areas.”

Members of the Clalit HMO in Israel received their first survey on Monday, and patients enrolled in the other three HMOs will be added to the system in the coming days. In addition to the predictive map, the platform works to triage patients remotely in real time.

“In parallel, we’re working on an authenticated triage system,” Radinsky told JI. “So if we know if somebody is specifically sick, or starting to develop COVID symptoms, we would contact the providers — of course with [the patient’s] approval.” On Monday, the first day of the rollout — with only Clalit members taking part — “we identified 200 people with COVID symptoms — and that less than a third of them were in isolation. In one day — this is crazy.”

The system is hindered somewhat by the fact that much of the ultra-Orthodox population in Israel — where the outbreak has been severe after some in the community were resistant to isolation restrictions — are not reachable via smartphone. But they are still working to overcome that.
“In certain areas, we often text them and then call them,” Radinsky explained. That way the questionnaire can be completed over the phone for those at high risk, which will aid in care management, but not in the epidemiological mapping. Overall, she said, 80% of those sent the survey complete it: “These are amazing numbers.”

An additional benefit of the remote triage platform is that it enables doctors in quarantine to continue working and assessing patients. As of Tuesday morning, the Health Ministry confirmed that 3,489 medical workers — including 758 doctors — in the country are in mandatory quarantine after exposure to a coronavirus patient. “The idea is to be able to triage the patient for coverage without any touch.”

Radinsky said Diagnostic Robotics has been approached by several countries interested in utilizing the platform in their own fight against COVID-19. Outside of Israel, Salesforce and Deloitte are working to distribute the technology as widely as possible.

“So many countries have approached us about giving access to the system,” she said. “It’s really important for me to convey that Israel is reaching out to additional countries offering our help. If anybody needs help, and our system can be helpful for them, we will be helping them.”

The platform is web-based and already available in multiple languages, and ready to be distributed as widely as possible. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff tweeted that the platform is free and ready to distribute to those in need.

“People in New York, the Jewish community there: We have the technology, we’re willing to give it to you,” Radinsky said. “We will not charge for the software. If you want to reach out to us, we’re here to help.”

Kira Radinsky

The epidemiological map and predictive AI tool is based on not just locally gathered information, but also the trajectory of the disease in other countries.

“We have all the information coming from South Korea, Italy and Israel,” Radinsky said. “So using AI, we can see how the disease progresses for different people and identify COVID symptoms very early on.”
The map that the system generates, she said, is the most powerful tool the platform has to offer.

“Based on [the map], people can build better decision making and understand how it’s going to spread,” Radinsky explained. “So if there are certain areas that need more isolation, and if certain areas need more masks or more tests, this is the only way of making such decisions.”

Predictions — in particular of medical events — have long been Radinsky’s passion and focus. The Ukrainian-born scientist, who made aliya at age 4, has been racking up accomplishments and achievements from a very young age. She enrolled in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology at just age 15 — later taking a break for her mandatory army service — where she earned her bachelor’s and master’s in computer science and a PhD in machine learning and artificial intelligence, all before age 26.

Shortly after completing her education, she founded the customer sales prediction start-up SalesPredict, which she sold three years later to eBay for a reported $40 million. After several years as the director of data science for eBay, Radinsky resigned late last year to work full time as the chair and CTO of Diagnostic Robotics.

It was during an internship at Microsoft headquarters in Washington state that Radinsky co-developed a platform that successfully predicted the first outbreak of cholera in Cuba in 130 years. The software mined data and news reports and drew conclusions based on correlations between floods, droughts and outbreaks.

So did Radinsky see this global pandemic coming?

“Unlike the previous pandemics — or epidemics — our system was able to predict it… this one is a new one and there was no pattern identifying it,” Radinsky explained to JI. “Once it started in China and spread to additional locations in Europe, it was clear it would reach Israel, the United States and other locations.”

Based on initial data, Radinsky said, the trajectory of the disease in Israel “is correlated with what’s happening in Wuhan,” the site of the original outbreak in China. But that prediction is still based on speculation since “there just isn’t enough data” to know if the outbreak will last several months or two years.

But the Israeli medical system is handling things well, she said, pointing to the low rate of deaths from the virus in the country — aided strongly by its early isolation efforts.

“Taking the steps for isolation very early on helped a lot,” she said, drawing a distinction with places like New York, where more than a hundred people are dying of the virus every day. “There was no other intervention that helped as much… every day that you wait it goes out of control.”

Staff members are at the forefront of medical technologies and innovation, task forces, methods and vaccines in the making, working to protect the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Article published at www.thejewishvoice.com on April 01, 2020.

Researchers on the COVID-19 response effort at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, from left: Professor Angel Porgador, deputy vice president for research and development; Dr. Roi Gazit; and Avishay Edrir, March 2020. Photo Credit: Dani Machlis/BGU.

Israeli universities and institutes—and their affiliated academics, researchers, doctors, scientists and students—are leading the fight against the coronavirus. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Technion‒Israel Institute of Technology, Rambam Health Care Campus, Migal Galilee Research Institute and the Sheba Medical Center are each at the forefront of medical technologies and innovation, task forces, methods and vaccines in the making that are working to protect the spread of the COVID-19 virus that has become a global pandemic over the last few months.

A researcher at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa on Feb. 19, 2019. Photo: Hadas Parush/Flash90.

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Beersheva)

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s president Professor Daniel Chamovitz recently announced a task force to “harness the university’s vast brain power, research skills and ingenuity to help cope with the coronavirus pandemic,” maintaining that it is “our moral obligation to contribute to coping with this pandemic.”

In a meeting attended by 50 scientists from diverse departments within the university, ideas were presented and the task force broke into several groups working on the most promising projects and collaborations, including self-sterilizing facemasks, medical emergency drones, a coronavirus test that could take just five minutes using chip technology, and a telemedicine and remote triage system.

“BGU is working to be the leading university in Israel in providing a comprehensive multidisciplinary coronavirus response effort,” said Doug Seserman, CEO of the American Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Professor Nadav Davidovitch, director of the School of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, shared his optimism with JNS that “this is not Armageddon, and these situations can lead to innovation.”

“Since we have national health insurance, we have excellent electronic records and integration between clinic and community,” he added.

“Israel has been preparing for this kind of event for at least two decades with the establishment of an epidemiological response and intervention team,” said Davidovitch. “We have a very strong system for lab testing, a strong surveillance system for influenza outbreaks and a strong public health system well-trained to do epidemiological investigations.”

View of the Haifa Bay from the campus of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in the Israeli city of Haifa, Feb. 19, 2019. Photo by Hadas Parush/Flash90.

Technion‒Israel Institute of Technology and Rambam Health Care Campus (Haifa)

Researchers at Israel’s Technion–Israel Institute of Technology and Rambam Health Care Campus have successfully tested a new method called “pooling,” which they claim will dramatically increase the country’s ability to test for COVID-19 efficiently.

Enabling simultaneous testing of dozens of samples, according to the researchers, the method will greatly accelerate the rate of COVID-19 testing and detection. Only in rare cases where the joint sample is found to be positive will individual test be needed for each of the specific samples.

Applying the test when the frequency of infection in the population is low, Idan Yelin, a researcher in the Technion Faculty of Biology, told JNS, will “allow for identifying infection cases very early on, before an outbreak is apparent.”

“The great thing about this method is that it can be used immediately,” he said, as “it uses the same equipment and kits that are being used routinely, while conserving scarce reagents.”

“Many people throughout the world found our method interesting and have contacted us,” added Yelin.

“As far as we know, this method is not currently being used anywhere [else],” he further maintained, noting that “the idea itself is not new; it is just that a proof of concept was lacking.”

“We showed that it works for this virus with the commonly used test and believe that implementing it can be extremely useful in the months to come for pandemic surveillance,” he continued, “both for identifying the scope of infection in the wide community and for routine monitoring of populations at risk.”

A view of a laboratory at the Migal Galilee Research Institute. A newly developed Israeli vaccine for coronavirus will likely be ready for testing in less than 10 weeks, said Migal’s CEO David Zigdon.

Migal Galilee Research Institute (Kiryat Shmona, Israel)

A newly developed Israeli vaccine for coronavirus will likely be ready for testing in less than 10 weeks, said Migal Galilee Research Institute’s CEO David Zigdon.

Funded by the Israel’s Ministry of Science and Technology and in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture, the research institute has been working for four years towards a vaccine that can be adapted for various viruses, which is now being focused to create a vaccine against COVID-19, the human strain of coronavirus.

According to the institute, this possibility was identified as a byproduct of Migal’s development of a vaccine against IBV (Infectious Bronchitis Virus), a disease affecting poultry. Now, Migal has made required genetic adjustments to adapt the vaccine to COVID-19, and is working to achieve the safety approvals that will enable in-vivo testing.

According to Zigon, the institute’s goal is to produce the vaccine during the next seven to nine weeks, and to achieve safety approval in another few weeks.

“This will be an oral vaccine, making it particularly accessible to the general public,” he said in a press release. “We are currently in intensive discussions with potential partners that can help accelerate the in-human trials phase and expedite the completion final product development and regulatory activities.”

Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer (Ramat Gan)

Rated among the 10 best hospitals in the world in 2020 by Newsweek, experts at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center are currently on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic with doctors who have innovated telemedicine in treating the virus, while protecting medical staff and setting the standard of care for telemedicine during this time.

“Sheba Medical Center has emerged as a global leader when it comes to telemedicine in the fight against this pandemic,” Dr. Galia Barkai, head of telemedicine at Sheba Medical Center, told JNS.

Barkai laid out the three main ways Sheba is using telemedicine to treat and save patients, while protecting vital health-care workers. First, the facility is “transitioning standard services, such as outpatient care, to virtual visits.”

Secondly, Sheba is using telemedicine to support isolated coronavirus patients in a special facility. “We have created a new standard that has now become a national standard in Israel,” she said. “We do this via telemedicine kits containing innovative technology patients can use at home, which report to doctors in real time.”

The third, she continued, is for critically ill patients. “We designed our new dedicated COVID-19 Critical Care ICU so that nurses and physicians can treat the patient continuously at a safe distance, using various methods such as AI [artificial intelligence] to predict patient deterioration, robotics and even a minicar that allow them to get close to the patients.”

“It was only possible to implement these new services so quickly at Sheba because we have been working on advanced telemedicine capabilities for years,” said Barkai. “This allowed us to scale quickly at the moment of crisis.”

While it’s not “brand-new technology” Sheba is inventing, explained Barkai, the medical center excels at leveraging existing technology and embedding it in their workflow, setting a new standard of care for hospitals and medical centers around the world.

Researcher Avi Schroeder’s technology for shellfish could protect us against coronavirus. He’s also working on a cancer drug from an elephant protein.

Can an antiviral food additive for farmed shrimp be adapted for protecting humans against coronavirus?

Very possibly, says the technology’s developer, Israeli scientist and serial entrepreneur Avi Schroeder.

Article published at www.israel21c.org on March 25, 2020.

Technion personalized medicine researcher Dr. Avi Schroeder invented a technology to protect shrimp from a deadly virus. Photo courtesy of the Technion

The coronavirus crisis has concerned him from the start. In January, he helped organize a delivery of 10,000 protective facemasks on the last flight to China from Ben-Gurion International Airport. On March 15, he agreed to advise the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command on dealing with the epidemic in Israel.

Schroeder explains that five years ago, his lab invented a technology that boosts the immune system of animals against viral diseases.

The invention was spun off into a Haifa-based startup, ViAqua Therapeutics. With Schroeder as scientific adviser, ViAqua decided to focus on shrimp, an important aquaculture product in many countries. A viral infection called white spot syndrome is wiping out nearly 30 percent of the shrimp population globally every year.

“The feed proved extremely effective in trials against the virus conducted in Thailand, USA and Europe,” Schroeder tells ISRAEL21c.Regulatory approval is expected this year in 11 countries.

Schroeder believes the same antiviral technology could be adapted for humans.

“The gap is not great. We understand how the virus works and where we can attack it to stop its progression inside the body,” he explains.

Research partnerships could push this approach forward as the pandemic continues.

Elephants never forget, or get cancer

ViAqua Therapeutics is one of four biotech startups in which Schroeder is involved. It’s not the only one with an animal connection.

While ViAqua focuses on how humans can protect shrimp against viral diseases, Peel Therapeutics focuses on how elephants can protect humans against cancer.

We all know the adage that elephants never forget. What is more astonishing is that elephants never get cancer.

Schroeder heard this fact in 2015 from Dr. Joshua Schiffman, a Salt Lake City pediatric hematologist-oncologist speaking at a local medical conference.

Eager to find out more, Schroeder invited Schiffman to dinner in Haifa that evening.

“Elephants’ body mass is 100 times greater than ours and they have a similar lifespan. If they don’t get cancer even though they have 100 times more cells than we do, something is protecting them that we lack,” Schroeder learned from Schiffman.

And Schiffman learned that Schroeder develops nanotechnologies to deliver cancer meds precisely to tumor sites.

The conversation led the two scientists to cofound Peel Therapeutics (“peel” is Hebrew for “elephant”).

The company, jointly held by the Technion and the University of Utah, discovered which protein protects elephants from cancer: P53.

“Humans have two copies of P53, and elephants have 40 copies of P53,” Schroeder tells ISRAEL21c. “One of the elephant copies is a super-acting P53. I thought we could use nanotechnology to deliver this elephant protein to humans as a medication.”

In Petri dishes, synthetic elephant P53 effectively killed cells from 15 types of human cancers. “It is unbelievable to see how the cancer cells explode,” says Schroeder. Preclinical trials are proceeding.

Moebius Medical

Schroeder’s first enterprise was a Hebrew University spinoff, Moebius Medical, based in Tel Aviv.

The license for the company’s injectable medication to treat severe osteoarthritis is now owned by Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, one of the world’s 10 largest specialty and generic medicine makers.

Advanced clinical trials are planned this year in the United States and Europe.

“It was one of the greatest moments of my life when I heard the results of the first clinical trial,” says Schroeder. “A single injection lubricates the knee with a new medicinal compound and lets patients regain daily function with almost no pain medication, which is amazing.”

The effect is immediate and lasts about 90 days. Pending further trials, Schroeder hopes to see the Moebius medication on the market around 2022.

Barcode Diagnostics

Barcode Diagnostics aims to help oncologists choose the best treatment for each cancer patient.

“Not knowing which medication to give is one of the greatest challenges physicians face daily,” says Schroeder.

“It’s assumed in breast cancer that about one-third of patients receive medication they don’t respond to. And that type of cancer has the greatest arsenal of research and treatment options. So we wondered: Could we improve the personalized medicine process?”

They invented a technology that works like an allergy test inside the patient’s tumor.

Nanoparticles containing minuscule doses of different medications — each the size of 1/1000 width of a hair – are introduced into the tumor. They’re tracked using a unique barcoding system to determine within 48 hours which is most effective.

“We had a lot of moments of almost giving up because it was so hard,” says Schroeder, “but an amazing team of students and researchers got it to work.”

Backed by the NGT3 (Next Generation Technology) venture fund in Nazareth, Barcode Diagnostics is starting human clinical trials this year in Israel.

Schroeder expects a fast regulatory path because the technology fills an unmet need in cancer treatment.

Technion researcher Dr. Avi Schroeder is advising the Home Front Command on dealing with coronavirus. Photo courtesy of the Technion

Tikkun olam

Schroeder was raised with four siblings in a Jerusalem family steeped in science, medicine and the Jewish value of tikkun olam, repairing the world.

His father, physicist and lecturer Gerald Schroeder, has written such books as The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom. His mother, Barbara Sofer, is an award-winning author as well as Israeli director of public relations for Hadassah.

Ever since completing graduate studies in chemical engineering at Ben-Gurion and Hebrew universities and a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012, Schroeder has looked for innovations that “you can invent in a lab and really change people’s lives.”

In addition to his lab and the four startups, and now advising the Home Front Command, Schroeder teaches chemical engineering and nanobiotechnology at the Technion. And he is raising five children with his educator wife, Hadas.

With only 24 hours in a day, how does he do it all?

“I surround myself with great people. I learned that when you grow teams of great people around you, you can do great things and be more meaningful with your time,” Schroeder tells ISRAEL21c.

“Good science has to be connected to the real world, so in addition to scientists we also need people who understand the medical reality and the business around the science — how the product should look, which patients would benefit most, and how to navigate the regulatory space.”

Schroeder’s lab is “a great place to invent disruptive technologies,” he says. “Companies come in to talk to our students; we have WhatsApp groups with the CEOs. I’m excited about all our products and I believe they all can make a big difference.”

The National Emergency Team of the Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D) in the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMoD) has adapted two systems developed by defense industries Elbit and IAI, to measure the vital signs of patients.

The data, including pulse, respiratory rate and temperature, are measured remotely using a combination of radar and electro-optical sensors, thus reducing the risk of infection to medical personnel. The next stage of development: screening and prioritizing patient care based on the analysis of vital data.

Article published at i-hls.com on March 31, 2020.

The National Emergency Team led by the Director of the DDR&D, Brig. Gen. (Res.), Dr. Dani Gold, continues to identify and develop advanced technological solutions to help fight the spread of the COVID-19 virus. In recent days, the team has successfully completed a test in which two systems were adapted to measure the vital data of patients, remotely.

The systems, developed by Elbit Systems and Elta, a subsidiary of IAI, use an array of radar and electro-optical sensors. The team has two medical advisors, Dr. Yossi Shaya and Dr. Akiva Esterson of the Beilinson – Rabin Medical Center.

The vital signs measured using the system will be displayed on a monitor for the physician to review. In addition, the data is displayed in a graphic user interface that facilitates decision-making processes. The system will enable medical staff to remain in a sterile environment, and limit contact with the patient, thereby significantly reducing the risk of infection.

The goal of the test was to determine the systems’ reliability and accessibility. As a result of the test, plans are underway for the implementation of these systems in medical centers. The test was conducted in collaboration with Elbit, Elta Petah Tikva, EchoCare Technologies, Vayyar, Neteera, Rabin Medical Center (Beilinson and Sharon Hospitals), the Directorate of Research and Development in the DDR&D, led by Brig. Gen. Yaniv Rotem, Dr. Yoni Savir of the Technion and additional research groups from the academic community and the IDF.

Col. A, DDR&D in the Ministry of Defense: “The combination of the technological capabilities of the defense industries and the extraordinary capabilities of the officers in the DDR&D, enables us to adapt systems developed for security purposes, to fulfill medical needs in light of the coronavirus. The system that we have adapted is based on radar and thermal cameras and can measure patients’ vital signs remotely.”

Researchers at Technion announced a successful trial of a method of pooling medical samples and performing simultaneous testing for the presence of the virus on 32 or 64 samples at a time

If you like puzzles you have probably encountered one of the ones that involve a single counterfeit coin hidden among a larger number of real ones. Normally, in these problems, you have to separate the fake coin, which has a different weight from the real ones, by using a balance scale. But you are only allowed to use the scale a small number of times, perhaps two or three.

Classic simple example: you’re given nine coins and promised that the lone counterfeit is lighter than the others. Can you single it out for disposal, or for passing off onto an unsuspecting cashier, using the balance only twice? You can (and I’ll give you this chance to cover up or scroll away from the answer if you want to try figuring it out yourself).

In your first test, you put three coins in each pan of the balance, leaving three aside. If one pan is lighter than the other, the coin has to be in that group of three; if they are equal the coin is obviously in the group of three left off to the side. Having isolated a three-coin group, you use the same logic to pick out the counterfeit. Pick any two coins and put one in each pan: if one is lighter, that’s the fake. If they’re equal, the fake must be the third one.

Article published at https://nationalpost.com on March 30, 2020.

Medical personnel test a person for the coronavirus at Erasme Hospital in Brussels on March 30.

One of the interesting, and possibly significant, sidelights on the war against the new coronavirus involves multiplicative logic of a similar kind. On March 18, infectious disease researchers at Technion, Israel’s oldest university, announced a successful trial, completed in less than a week, of a method of pooling medical samples and performing simultaneous polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for the presence of the virus on 32 or 64 samples at a time. That is, you get a very fast “positive” or “negative” answer for the whole group immediately, and can proceed with tests of individuals (without necessarily taking new samples) in the case of a group positive. If the pooled test is negative, everybody’s off the hook.

There does not seem to be a paper describing the trial yet, but the scientists involved are of high repute, and the press release got other statisticians and researchers talking about the idea. (There is a mathematical preprint on the arXiv open publishing site discussing the “efficiency gains” from pooled testing in various scenarios.)

The whole world is in a situation like the chap in the coin puzzle: we have limited access to tests that we would ideally perform on everybody alive, individually and at once. Everybody is working, with visible but frustratingly belated success, on expanding the number of individual tests than can be done per day. Pooled tests could be part of a strategy for traditional epidemiological surveillance. If you have a group of asymptomatic people — maybe it is a group of special communal concern, like the staff of a care facility or a grocery store — you could do the pooled test first. If you get a negative you are spared the series of tests on individuals. I know everyone has had their fill of herd metaphors, but pooled PCR has been used as a cost- and time-saver for decades on livestock, in just this way.

A staff member wearing a protective face mask and gloves takes a swab from a man at a drive-thru coronavirus screening centre in Abu Dhabi on March 30.

But pooled tests may also be useful for sampling large populations and for quantifying the presence of the virus in them. The number of asymptomatic cases in the general population is a parameter of considerable concern now, and it will go on being important after we control today’s disastrous outbreaks in virus-naive populations. Pooled-sample PCR has a history of being used in this way, too, in checking for seasonal changes in the spread of low-grade infectious diseases, including other coronaviruses.

Probably every virologist knew a technique like this was possible, and if they had been given unlimited budgets and power in advance of the crisis, they probably would have cooked up plans for including pooling in a fast-response strategy for a pandemic of novel disease. It is the sort of thing experts will go on talking about long after the rest of us have returned to our lives and pushed aside our careers of couch-potato epidemiology and economics.

Pooling samples for testing is not useful in every conceivable situation. Once a large fraction of the population has a virus, the efficiency gains from pooling evaporate, and if the tightest technical bottleneck in your testing capacity is the number of nasopharyngeal swabs available, or the number of test personnel available to wield them, pooling won’t help. I suspect that pooling might stay on the agenda because we seem likely to end up in a situation, or a world of local situations, in which a first wave of infection has been suppressed but most of the population is still naive to the virus.

Staff members are at the forefront of medical technologies and innovation, task forces, methods and vaccines in the making, working to protect the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Israeli universities and institutes and their affiliated academics, researchers, doctors, scientists and students are leading the fight against the coronavirus.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Technion‒Israel Institute of Technology, Rambam Health Care Campus, Migal Galilee Research Institute and the Sheba Medical Center are each at the forefront of medical technologies and innovation, task forces, methods and vaccines in the making that are working to protect the spread of the COVID-19 virus that has become a global pandemic over the last few months.

Article published at www.israelhayom.com/ on March 28, 2020.

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s president Professor Daniel Chamovitz recently announced a task force to “harness the university’s vast brainpower, research skills and ingenuity to help cope with the coronavirus pandemic,” maintaining that it is “our moral obligation to contribute to coping with this pandemic.”

In a meeting attended by 50 scientists from diverse departments within the university, ideas were presented and the task force broke into several groups working on the most promising projects and collaborations, including self-sterilizing face masks, medical emergency drones, a coronavirus test that could take just five minutes using chip technology, and a telemedicine and remote triage system.

“BGU is working to be the leading university in Israel in providing a comprehensive multidisciplinary coronavirus response effort,” said Doug Seserman, CEO of the American Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Professor Nadav Davidovitch, director of the School of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, shared his optimism with JNS that “this is not Armageddon, and these situations can lead to innovation.”

“Since we have national health insurance, we have excellent electronic records and integration between clinic and community,” he added.

“Israel has been preparing for this kind of event for at least two decades with the establishment of an epidemiological response and intervention team,” said Davidovitch. “We have a very strong system for lab testing, a strong surveillance system for influenza outbreaks and a strong public health system well-trained to do epidemiological investigations.”

The Technion

Researchers at Israel’s Technion and Rambam Health Care Campus have successfully tested a new method called “pooling,” which they claim will dramatically increase the country’s ability to test for COVID-19 efficiently.

Enabling simultaneous testing of dozens of samples, according to the researchers, the method will greatly accelerate the rate of COVID-19 testing and detection. Only in rare cases where the joint sample is found to be positive will an individual test be needed for each of the specific samples.

Applying the test when the frequency of infection in the population is low, Idan Yelin, a researcher in the Technion Faculty of Biology, told JNS, will “allow for identifying infection cases very early on, before an outbreak is apparent.”

“The great thing about this method is that it can be used immediately,” he said, as “it uses the same equipment and kits that are being used routinely while conserving scarce reagents.”

“Many people throughout the world found our method interesting and have contacted us,” added Yelin.

“As far as we know, this method is not currently being used anywhere [else],” he further maintained, noting that “the idea itself is not new; it is just that a proof of concept was lacking.”

“We showed that it works for this virus with the commonly used test and believe that implementing it can be extremely useful in the months to come for pandemic surveillance,” he continued, “both for identifying the scope of infection in the wide community and for routine monitoring of populations at risk.”

A newly developed Israeli vaccine for coronavirus will likely be ready for testing in less than 10 weeks, said Migal Galilee Research Institute’s CEO David Zigdon.

Funded by Israel’s Science and Technology Ministry and in cooperation with the Agriculture Ministry the research institute has been working for four years towards a vaccine that can be adapted for various viruses, which is now being focused to create a vaccine against COVID-19, the human strain of coronavirus.

According to the institute, this possibility was identified as a byproduct of Migal’s development of a vaccine against IBV (Infectious Bronchitis Virus), a disease affecting poultry. Now, Migal has made required genetic adjustments to adapt the vaccine to COVID-19, and is working to achieve the safety approvals that will enable in-vivo testing.

According to Zigon, the institute’s goal is to produce the vaccine during the next seven to nine weeks and to achieve safety approval in another few weeks.

“This will be an oral vaccine, making it particularly accessible to the general public,” he said in a press release. “We are currently in intensive discussions with potential partners that can help accelerate the in-human trials phase and expedite the completion of final product development and regulatory activities.”

Medical personnel at the coronavirus ward being prepared at the Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, in central Israel

Rated among the 10 best hospitals in the world in 2020 by Newsweek, experts at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center are currently on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic with doctors who have innovated telemedicine in treating the virus while protecting medical staff and setting the standard of care for telemedicine during this time.

“Sheba Medical Center has emerged as a global leader when it comes to telemedicine in the fight against this pandemic,” Dr. Galia Barkai, head of telemedicine at Sheba Medical Center, told JNS.

Barkai laid out the three main ways Sheba is using telemedicine to treat and save patients, while protecting vital health-care workers. First, the facility is “transitioning standard services, such as outpatient care, to virtual visits.”

Secondly, Sheba is using telemedicine to support isolated coronavirus patients in a special facility. “We have created a new standard that has now become a national standard in Israel,” she said. “We do this via telemedicine kits containing innovative technology patients can use at home, which reports to doctors in real-time.”

The third, she continued, is for critically ill patients. “We designed our new dedicated COVID-19 Critical Care ICU so that nurses and physicians can treat the patient continuously at a safe distance, using various methods such as AI [artificial intelligence] to predict patient deterioration, robotics and even a mini-car that allow them to get close to the patients.”

“It was only possible to implement these new services so quickly at Sheba because we have been working on advanced telemedicine capabilities for years,” said Barkai. “This allowed us to scale quickly at the moment of crisis.”

While it’s not “brand-new technology” Sheba is inventing, explained Barkai, the medical center excels at leveraging existing technology and embedding it in their workflow, setting a new standard of care for hospitals and medical centers around the world.

These emergency projects focus on different important aspects, such as detection and diagnostics; vaccine development; therapeutic treatments; and methods for remote care and monitoring of patients.

Article published at www.jpost.com on March 25, 2020.

An employee of German biopharmaceutical company CureVac, demonstrates research workflow on a vaccine for the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease at a laboratory in Tuebingen, Germany
(photo credit: REUTERS/ANDREAS GEBERT)

Researchers from over 20 labs at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology are working around the clock to combat the further spread of the novel coronavirus outbreak around the world.
These emergency projects focus on different important aspects, such as detection and diagnostics; vaccine development; therapeutic treatments; and even methods for remote care and monitoring of patients suffering from COVID-19, including robotic solutions.

Noteworthy examples in coronavirus diagnostics include Prof. Hossam Haick, from Technion’s Wolfson Faculty of Chemical engineering. His research is working on a diagnostic test for coronavirus carriers before they show symptoms.
In the vaccine development field, the chemical engineering faculty’s Prof. Avi Schroeder is working on a vaccine based on one developed for shrimps. If successful, the vaccine will be commercialized by his start-up company, ViAqua Theraputics. Schroeder is also working on a therapeutic treatment method by working on a drug that could treat some respiratory distress symptoms.
“Technion is at the forefront of science and technology worldwide, and during this time of crisis, we are collaborating closely with the health system and the hospitals in order to find immediate solutions to the challenges they are facing,” said Technion president Prof. Uri Sivan.
“We are working on advanced diagnostic techniques, personalized medical treatment, technologies that enable pinpointed drug delivery, treatment protocols based on machine learning and artificial intelligence, data mining and Big Data management, developing robots for remote medical care and more.
“Technion’s added value is apparent in the close interaction between medicine and engineering at our university, and in the interdisciplinary collaborations that are generating rapid and sophisticated solutions to help fight COVID-19.”

In addition, Technion researchers are collaborating with medical staff from Rambam Medical Center on numerous other emergency projects to help combat the coronavirus.
However, other research institutes in Israel are also working hard on treatments and vaccines for the virus. Earlier this week, the Kiryat Shmona-based MIGAL – Galilee Research Institute announced that they expected to begin human testing of an oral vaccine – which was based on a vaccine originally designed to prevent the Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV) in poultry – for the coronavirus in eight to 10 weeks.
“We are currently in intensive discussions with potential partners that can help accelerate the in-human trials phase and expedite the completion of final product development and regulatory activities,” said MIGAL CEO David Zigdon.
The coronavirus outbreak has spread throughout the world in the past few months, infecting hundreds of thousands of people and killing thousands more. At the time of writing, Israel has confirmed over two thousand cases and five deaths from COVID-19, and the country has been hard at work expanding testing and implementing containment measures.

Technion scientists mobilized in the worldwide effort to find solutions for the current global health crisis.

Article published at www.reuters.com on March 24, 2020.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An analysis of coronavirus patients’ voices could yield a “vocal fingerprint” to help detect COVID-19 symptoms in others and prioritize testing and treatment, the Israeli Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.
Starting this week, an Israeli startup company working with hospitals and academic institutions will sample voices of confirmed coronavirus patients through a mobile application in a research project led by the ministry.

“These voice samples will be analyzed using an AI (Artificial Intelligence)-based algorithm in order to identify the unique vocal ‘fingerprint’, the ministry said in a statement.

The coronavirus affects the respiratory system and signs of distress can be reflected in the patterns of a person’s voice and breathing.
Tal Wenderow, President and CEO of Vocalis Health, the company that developed the mobile app, said that the algorithm would be used for remote diagnosis and monitoring.

At this stage, the app would only be used by medical staff together with the patients taking part in the study, but the company’s website allows for anyone to take part and send a voice sample to the researchers.

Researchers hope that healthcare systems would be able to use the data to prioritize testing and hospitalization, allowing patients with light symptoms to stay at home.

The ministry said the monitoring system “can be conducted from afar, in order to prevent the spread of the disease and overburdening of the national healthcare system.”

Initial results of the study were expected within six weeks.
Israel has reported more than 1,600 coronavirus cases and three fatalities.

Technion scientists mobilized in the worldwide effort to find solutions for the current global health crisis.

Published on March 26, 2020.

Researchers in more than 20 Technion labs are working round the clock to help fight the spread of COVID-19. Their research includes early detection and diagnosis of the virus, development of a vaccine and therapies, and designing robotic solutions for remote monitoring and care of patients.
“Technion is at the forefront of science and technology worldwide, and during this time of crisis, we are collaborating closely with the health system and the hospitals in order to find immediate solutions to the challenges they are facing,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “We are working on advanced diagnostic techniques, personalized medical treatment, technologies that enable pinpointed drug delivery, treatment protocols based on machine learning and artificial intelligence, data mining and Big Data management, developing robots for remote medical care, and more. Technion’s added value is apparent in the close interaction between medicine and engineering at our university, and in the interdisciplinary collaborations that are generating rapid and sophisticated solutions to help fight COVID-19.”

Technion emergency projects include:

• Diagnostics
• Prof. Hossam Haick, Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering: His lab is developing a diagnostic test for pre-symptomatic coronavirus carriers. Research focuses on two approaches: diagnosing the virus with a breath test, and monitoring the virus with an inexpensive patch adhered to the arm or chest.
• Prof. Roy Kishony, Faculty of Biology: Pooling method for accelerated testing of COVID-19.
• Prof. Amit Meller, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering: Identifying and quantifying viral RNA using nanopores.
• Prof. Moran Bercovici, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering: Innovative and rapid diagnostic test using blood and saliva.
  Vaccine development
• Prof. Avi Schroeder, Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering: Developing a vaccine for coronavirus based on a vaccine for shrimps, he invented at Technion – and is being commercialized by his Technion start-up ViAqua Therapeutics.
• Prof. Zaid Abassi and Prof. Oded Lewinson, Rappaport Faculty of Medicine: Prof. Lewinson is developing recombinant ACE-2 receptors in collaboration with Prof. Ofer Mandelboim of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The aim is to develop antibodies for ACE-2 receptors on which the coronavirus attaches itself to the host organism’s cells.

Therapeutics:

• Prof. Josué Sznitman, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering: Innovative technology for delivering drugs to the lungs. Especially suitable for treating acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which is the principal cause of death among coronavirus patients.
• Prof. Roee Amit, Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering: Developing an ointment to treat coronavirus infections.
• Prof. Marcelle Machluf, Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering: Trapping the coronavirus using the existing nano-ghost technology developed in her lab.
• Prof. Avi Schroeder, Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering: Developing a targeted drug for treating acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), based on existing drug delivery methods.
  Aids for medical teams
• Prof. Eyal Zussman, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering: Developing filters and coatings using nanometric fibers.
• Prof. Yotam Bar-On, Rappaport Faculty of Medicine: Virologist specializing in COVID-19 – expert advice to medical teams.
• Prof. Shai Shen-Orr, Rappaport Faculty of Medicine: Identifying infected individuals based on their immune response; monitoring disease progression and complications in infected individuals; triage for the aged population and predict those with higher risk of complications or death. Additional collaboration is to develop rapid cell-based diagnostics for infections.
• Prof. Shady Farah, Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering: Developing anti-viral disinfectants.
• Prof. Shie Mannor, Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering: Artificial Intelligence research to evaluate the patients’ condition and the progress of the disease, in collaboration with Prof. Uri Shalit, Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management and Prof. Joachim Behar, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering.
• Prof. Alex Bronstein, Faculty of Computer Science is developing ultrasound for lung imaging. The researchers are adapting inexpensive ultrasound sensors in order to identify infections in the lungs caused by the coronavirus. Prof. Ron Kimmel, Faculty of Computer Science and Doron Shaked of General Electric are collaborating on this project.
• Prof. Ezri Tarazi, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning: Design and produce novel protective equipment for medical personnel using 3D printing; establishing a national network of designers who will plan and produce products for immediate use in the COVID-19 crisis.
  In addition, Technion researchers and Rambam Health Care Campus medical staff are working together in high gear on numerous emergency projects. This collaboration is led by Technion VP for External Relations and Resource Development Prof. Alon Wolf, Rambam Director-General Prof. Michael Halberthal and former Rambam Director-General Prof. Rafi Beyar.

COVID Testing: From Bench to Bedside by Winter

Image: Israeli researchers introduce pooling method for COVID-19 testing (Photo courtesy of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology)

The best way to stop the spread of the coronavirus is by identifying carriers and keeping them away from healthy people. That requires testing — and a lot of it.

Researchers at the Technion and Rambam Health Care Campus are undergoing a final validation of their “pooling” test, which would dramatically increase testing capacity and speed. They hope the test will be available for widespread use by winter, when people could be suffering from a second wave of coronavirus, or a combination of COVID-19 and the flu.

“In winter, a lot of people will have respiratory diseases and will really want to know if they have SARS or something else,” said Technion researcher Dr. Idan Yelin. “There are going to be a lot of people being tested — even more than now — and we will need this.”
The team is led by Technion Professor Roy Kishony, the Marilyn and Henry Taub Chair in Life Sciences, and the director of the Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering.

The new method, announced in March, advances PCR molecular testing common for COVID-19 by analyzing dozens of people simultaneously. Samples from saliva or throat and nose swabs are grouped into one batch and undergo a single test. If the group comes back negative, no further testing is needed. Individual testing would only be necessary when the pool comes up positive. Pooling is most beneficial in communities with a relatively low incidence of coronavirus because fewer positive results would emerge.

Currently, Israel is screening an average of 25,000 people per day, and as of July 19, the U.S. was testing more than 750,000 people daily, according to Johns Hopkins University & Medicine. The pooling method would test more people rapidly — a requirement for allowing the economy to reopen. The new approach would also save on chemical reagents and other equipment that has been in short supply.

Israeli researchers have successfully tested a method, known as pooling, that enables simultaneous testing of dozens of samples and can dramatically increase the current COVID-19 testing capacity using existing available resources. Its implementation has the potential to greatly accelerate the rate of testing and detection of COVID-19 infected patients in the population. The trial was conducted jointly by researchers from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa, Israel) and Rambam Health Care Campus (Haifa, Israel) with the support of the Ministry of Health.

Article by HospiMedica International staff writers published on www.hospimedica.com on Mar 24, 2020.

COVID-19 is diagnosed with PCR testing, which is common for virus monitoring and examines the presence of a unique genetic sequence of viruses in a sample taken from the patient. However, the test takes several hours and does not allow for monitoring of asymptomatic carriers in the population, which is vital to curb the epidemic, thus creating a bottleneck in identifying COVID-19 infected people.

“According to the new pooling approach that we have currently tested, molecular testing can be performed on a “combined sample,” taken from 32 or 64 patients. This way we can significantly accelerate the testing rate. Only in those rare cases, where the joint sample is found to be positive, will we conduct an individual test for each of the specific samples,” said Dr. Yuval Gefen, director of the Rambam Clinical Microbiology Laboratory.

“This is not a scientific breakthrough, but a demonstration of the effectivity of using the existing method and even the existing equipment to significantly increase the volume of samples tested per day. This is done by pooling multiple samples in a single test tube. Even when we conducted a joint examination of 64 samples in which only one was a positive carrier, the system identified that there was a positive sample,” said Prof. Roy Kishony, head of the research group in the Faculty of Biology at Technion. “Although there are some logistical challenges in implementing the method, we expect that it will greatly increase the volume of samples tested per day so that we can identify the asymptomatic carriers. This approach should reduce the chance of infection and flatten the infection curve.”

“This experiment that was conducted by Technion and Rambam researchers is complex, and under normal circumstances would take months. This is a remarkable example of the mobilization of an outstanding team in a time of crisis,” said Prof. Uri Sivan, President of the Technion. “The initial experiment was completed in less than four days. This achievement emphasizes the importance of the close relationship between Technion and Rambam and between medicine and engineering. Technion researchers have been enlisted in the war against the coronavirus and this is one of the many activities currently underway at Technion to combat the spread of the disease.”

“This collaboration between Technion and Rambam, for the benefit of all humanity, is just one example of many joint projects between the two institutions. These collaborations are designed to harness the multidisciplinary capabilities of Technion researchers for the advancement of medicine,” said Prof. Michael Halberthal, General Director of Rambam Health Care Campus.