Sheba Medical Center Startups Raise Over $110M In 2021

Israel’s largest hospital, Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer – named the top 10 of Newsweek magazine’s best hospitals in the world – announced that $110 million was raised in 2021 by six companies from the hospital’s ARC Innovation Center.

All of the companies are based on technology invented and developed out of Sheba, the hospital said in a statement.

The ARC (Accelerate Redesign Collaborate) Innovation Center, led by Professor Eyal Zimlichman, Sheba’s Chief Innovation & Transformation Officer, endeavors to bring new technologies into the hospital and community ecosystem in order to revolutionize patient care. ARC allows seamless integration between innovators, scientists, startups, high-level developers, large corporate companies, investors, and academia-all under one roof. The ARC Innovation Center focuses on digital health technologies including precision medicine, big data, artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics, telemedicine, and mobile health.

“The ARC Innovation Center has been focusing on ground-breaking, innovative technologies with a prime directive to redesign healthcare. Our commercialization efforts enable us to expand the reach of these technologies and create global impact on a wide scale,” said Professor Zimlichman.

The Sheba startups that received investments this year included Aidoc, the company that raised $66 million to use AI to analyze medical images; Belkin Laser, the company that raised $13.75 million to develop an automated one-second laser treatment for glaucoma; Starget Pharma, the company that raised $10 million to develop products for the diagnosis and targeted treatment of cancer through radioactive radiation; Appen Medical, the company that raised $7.6 million to develop a minimally invasive implantable device designed to reduce stroke risk in patients suffering from atrial fibrillation; Innovalve Bio Medical, the company that raised $7.2 million to develop catheter-based heart valve therapies; and TechsoMed, the company that raised $7 million to develop its BioTrace platform, an AI-based technology that enables physicians to detect and visualize tissue viability using standard commercial ultrasound imaging for thermal ablation procedures.

“The quality of innovation at Sheba has earned the trust of healthcare innovators and industry alike. Moreover, the funding of six companies this year is a testament to investor confidence in Sheba-developed innovations, which aim to solve complex clinical challenges and make healthcare systems more efficient,” said Dr. Sylvie Luria, CEO of Sheba’s Technology Transfer Company, which handles ARC’s commercialization efforts.  “Reaching $1 billion in investments in ARC technologies over a decade is a milestone, but the impact of these investments in improved healthcare delivery and patient outcomes is exponentially greater.”