Three Israeli Founders Among TIME Magazine’s ‘Health Care 50’ List For 2018

Three founders from two Israeli-founded startups were among  TIME Magazine’s “The Health Care 50,” a list of 50 people transforming health care in 2018.

They are Yonatan Adiri, founder of the startup Healthy.io, which uses machine learning and computer vision to turn smartphone cameras into clinical-grade medical devices, and husband-and-wife team Oren and Roni Frank, who in 2012 founded Talkspace, which links patients with thousands of licensed therapists and mental healthcare providers through an online platform.

These founders made the “technology” category of the TIME list.

It was the first annual “health care persons” list for the prestigious US magazine, showcasing “physicians, scientists, and business and political leaders whose work is transforming health care right now.”

The publication asked its team of health editors and reporters to nominate people “who significantly changed the state of US health care this year.” People were evaluated on factors such as originality, impact, and quality.

“The American health care system has been plagued for decades by major problems, from lack of access to uncontrolled costs to worrying rates of medical errors. And yet, real as those issues remain, the field has also given rise to extraordinary innovation,” the magazine wrote.

Experts who made the TIME list include health care professionals, experts, investors, and entrepreneurs, such as Bill and Melinda Gates, known for their investments into global health, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the head of the US Food and Drug Administration, Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey, WW (formerly Weight Watchers) CEO Mindy Grossman, CVS Pharmacy CEO Larry Merlo, GoFundMe CEO Rob Solomon, and others.

Also on the list was Kare Schultz, the new president, and chief executive officer of Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals. Schultz, a Danish executive, relocated to Israel and took over the ailing company’s Petach Tikva headquarters in September 2018, succeeding interim CEO Yizhak Peterburg after Erez Vigodman resigned. Prior to Schultz’s appointment, the world’s largest generic pharmaceutical company had suffered a string of setbacks, including a 40 percent loss of its share price. Schultz, a former president and CEO of Denmark’s H. Lundbeck A/S, who was tasked with setting up the firm’s strategy, divesting assets, restoring investor relations, and cutting its debt, helped Teva win FDA approval for the first generic version of the EpiPen.