Israel is a thriving tech hub, recognised for leading investments in essential verticals such as healthcare. These digital investments have secured the country’s positioning as a leading competitor within the global technology landscape. We take a look at Duality Technologies’ inspiring partnership with Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, as well as how Sheba Medical Center shortens cancer diagnostic time from three weeks to minutes.
Duality and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center revolutionise research agility in healthcare
Duality Technologies, a leader in secure data collaboration for enterprises, has announced its partnership with Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (TASMC). The partnership enables TASMC’s partners network to easily collaborate on sensitive data while preserving privacy of patients and complying with regulation. Duality’s platform was successfully piloted by TASMC, proving that Real-World Data analysis yields accurate results when performed on data protected by Duality Platform.
“Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center is world-renowned for top quality medical care and for leadership in technology innovation. Our data is very valuable and routinely contributes important insights in real-world data analysis; it is also very sensitive and must be protected at all times. Our partnership with Duality will help to simplify the process for TASMC’s industrial and research partners to access, analyse and derive insights from TASMC’s data by accessing via Duality’s platform in a more expedient manner while always protecting the data, even when being analysed,” said Prof. Eli Sprecher, Deputy Director for Research and Development.
Healthcare organisations possess valuable data that is essential for real-world studies of effectiveness and adverse effects of medications, vaccines and devices. To gain such insights medical centres often must team up with other medical centres to build statistically significant cohorts and with industrial partners that work on medical research. Such projects are extremely difficult to get off the ground due to concerns of compliance, control of use-of-data. Duality platform addresses all these concerns in a practical manner. The power of this unique platform, coupled with the data-rich research being conducted by leading medical centres, pharma and other health organisations – can transform the way we approach research learnings to improve treatment, patient and the disease landscape.
“Deriving insights from valuable data through collaborations is at the heart of modern data-driven healthcare, but it is increasingly challenging due to globally strengthening data privacy regulation. We are excited by the partnering with Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, as it unlocks a new, agile and secure way for organisations to collaborate on healthcare data, while complying with regulation,” said Rina Shainski, Chairwoman and Co-founder at Duality. “Our company’s mission has always been to deliver highest-quality technological solutions addressing the challenges of trust, safety and compliance in data collaborations. This partnership will enable TASMC agile participation in collaborative medical research, multi-centre studies, cross-border initiatives and more.”
Dr Ravit Geva, Deputy Director of the Oncology Division and heading the Clinical Research and Innovation unit of the oncology division, said: “There is always a gap between promise and reality with Big Data. We need to be able to combine data from different centres with good quality and still respecting the privacy-related interests of individuals whose data we are using and preserving data ownership. Our joint study with Duality aimed and verified the accuracy of statistical oncology endpoint when done through encrypted data. The secure analysis was compared with the currently internally used conventional data management and analysis methods on Collaborative Real-world Oncological Survival analysis without revealing patients’ protected health information.”
Sheba Medical Center pioneers accelerated AI cancer diagnostics platform
Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest medical centre and ranked world’s best hospital for the last five years, announced the deployment of a new accelerated, AI-powered cancer diagnostics research platform to improve patient diagnosis, treatment and outcomes. The platform enables the integration of AI technology developed by Sheba in addition to solutions created by innovative digital health startups.
One of the first AI solutions to be deployed was developed by Imagene, an emerging leader in AI-based precision oncology, incorporating an algorithm to identify actionable biomarkers of non-small cell lung cancer. The algorithm is directly applied to a digitised image of a conventionally stained pathology slide and can then, within minutes, identify the presence of actionable biomarkers in the tumour, thus providing crucial information for diagnostic and therapeutic decisions. The solution essentially shortens diagnostic time from three weeks to minutes, enabling patients to begin treatment earlier.
“We have reached another significant milestone in digital pathology with this ability to detect biomarkers by AI. The use of deep learning algorithms is changing the world of diagnosis and in certain cases can drastically shorten the cost and time to treatment. I am excited to hear about the growing number of patients who were able to receive rapid diagnoses and treatment using our new service,” said Prof. Iris Barshack, Head of the Pathology Institute at Sheba Medical Center.
This latest advancement in cancer diagnostics builds on the significant progress Sheba’s Pathology Institute has made in recent years. In 2019, the pathology lab at the hospital went fully digital, using computer screens for diagnosis instead of microscopes. Once the Pathology lab turned fully digital, the team worked in collaboration with Imagene who developed a rapid AI-based molecular profiling algorithm to identify actionable biomarkers from the digital biopsy image alone.
“We are very proud to be part of this incredibly important initiative by Prof. Barshack to facilitate an accelerated programme for rapid diagnosis of cancer patients,” said Dean Bitan, Co-founder and CEO of Imagene. “It takes an innovative approach and openness to new and advanced technologies to drive cancer research and advanced cancer care. We believe this programme will showcase the importance of rapid molecular profiling within the clinical workflow.”
“AI is already transforming the field of healthcare and oncology specifically. ARC is proud to be a part of this collaborative achievement in precision medicine that will have a significant impact in global health,” said Prof. Eyal Zimlichman, Chief Transformation Officer and Chief Innovation Officer at Sheba Medical Center and Director and Founder of ARC Innovation.
Click below to share this article