Last New Year’s Eve, the first COVID-19 case was reported in Wuhan, China. Since then, the virus has spread all over the world. Today, more than 70 million coronavirus cases and nearly 1.6 million deaths associated with the virus have been reported, according to the World Health Organization.
By February, health systems were quickly responding and rethinking their care-delivery model. Over the...

Credit: Hospitech Respiration
As Israel faces a second wave of COVID-19, the Sheba Medical Centre is one of several major hospitals across the country to introduce a new respiratory guard system to prevent ventilator-associated complications in patients.
Israeli medical device startup Hospitech Respiration offered the AnapnoGuard system to hospitals in the country, on a free loan-basis in March. The solution was first...
Israeli blood testing startup Sight Diagnostics has announced a collaboration with Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv to mitigate the risk of contamination by COVID-19.
Sight’s OLO blood analyser will provide rapid complete blood count (CBC) results in a dedicated lab to process samples of COVID-19 patients who are being monitored and treated in a separate field hospital.
Prior to deploying OLO...
XRHealth has announced that it is working with Israel’s Sheba Medical Center to offer virtual reality (VR) telehealth services to patients exposed to coronavirus who are quarantined at the hospital, and to monitor their return home.
The partnership will see the patients be provided with access to VR headsets equipped with the company’s extended reality technology solutions and data analysis, as...
This story has been updated to include additional information.
Israel’s Sheba Medical Center is preparing to take custody of the 12 Israeli passengers onboard the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship that has been quarantined in Japan for several weeks because of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
The group does not include any confirmed cases — the two Israelis in that number are being treated in a hospital...

Credit: Piotr Swat/ Shutterstock.com
Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca has announced this week that it is launching an initiative that will see the company invest in Israel’s growing digital health space.
Called BeyondBio, the scheme follows a memorandum of understanding for investment in Israel signed earlier this year by AstraZeneca and the Israel Innovation Authority.
WHAT HAPPENED
According to a press statement, the first...

Credit: Sheba Medical Center
Israel’s Sheba Medical Center and Telesofia Medical, provider of personalised videos that aim to improve patient engagement, are introducing a telemedicine programme to help cancer patients talk to their doctors straight from their homes, enabling oncologists to better monitor their condition and offer support.
The initiative is starting as a pilot in the oncology department at the hospital,...

The Sheba Medical Center campus. (Photo courtesy Sheba Medical Center)
Hospitals all over the world hope that investment in innovation will ultimately lead to cost savings. But for Israel’s hospitals, that can't be an abstract hope, two hospital leaders told MobiHealthNews on a recent visit to the country. Instead, self-sustaining innovation is a concrete and immediate need for the hospitals’ bottom lines.
“Budget-wise, we have half a billion dollars per year,” Dr....
Google Street Breathe? San Francisco-based startup Aclima has announced plans to outfit Google’s fleet of camera-sporting Street View vehicles with mobile air quality and climate emissions sensors. According to the company, all of the data collected using the new system will be aggregated and made available as a public dataset on Google BigQuery. The companies are planning an initial rollout of...