8 Israeli Startups Named 2021 ‘Most Promising’ Digital Health Firms

Eight Israeli startups were named to the third annual Digital Health 150, an annual global ranking by New York-based research firm CB Insights of the 150 most promising companies using digital technology to transform the healthcare industry.

CB Insights provides a tech market intelligence platform that analyzes data on private companies, venture capital, partnerships, and investor activities. This year’s Digital Health 150 was unveiled live during CB Insights’ annual Future of Health event.

This year’s winners “include startups working on data integration & analytics, home health tech, virtual care, clinical intelligence,” CB Insights said.

The Israeli startups are three firms based in Israel and four firms that have Israeli founders. Most of the digital companies also have an R&D center in the country. They range from an AI-based medical imaging startup to a cancer tumor monitoring firm.

Brian Lee, SVP of CB Insights’ Intelligence Unit said this year’s list “is one of our most expansive yet, spotlighting 16 categories including virtual care, clinical trials tech, and workflow automation, as well as adding new categories such as home health tech and computer-aided imaging.”

The digital companies were selected by CB Insights’ Intelligence Unit from a pool of over 11,000 companies, including applicants and nominees. They were chosen based on several factors including data submitted by the companies, company business models, and momentum in the market. CB Insights also used Mosaic scores, its proprietary algorithm that measures the overall health and growth potential of private companies.

The cohort of startups raised some $14.98 billion in aggregate funding across 522 deals since 2016 and includes startups at different investment stages of development from early-stage companies to well-funded unicorns. In 2021, the 150 companies raised $9.2 billion in equity funding across 153 deals, as of November 19, 2021. Since 2020 there have also been 39 mega-round investments (over $100 million) to this year’s Digital Health 150, with 31 of those investments taking place in 2021.

Seventeen of the 150 companies are unicorns, which means they are valued at or above $1 billion as of their latest funding round.

Twenty-three percent of this year’s Digital Health 150 companies are based outside the US. This year’s winners are based in 18 countries including China, Nigeria, Germany, Argentina, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, India, and Israel.

Here are the eight Israeli startups:

DiA Imaging Analysis

Israel’s DiA Imaging Analysis is a leading provider of advanced AI-based solutions for ultrasound analysis. The company’s software enables users to identify clinical indications and abnormalities accurately. The company’s LVivo product line for cardiac and abdominal automated analysis allows clinicians with various levels of ultrasound experience to use and analyze ultrasound images on their ultrasound devices or healthcare IT systems with increased speed, efficiency, and accuracy.

The Israeli medical imaging startup, which has offices in Ramat Gan and Beersheba in Israel and Connecticut in the US, was founded in 2009 by Hila Goldman-Aslan (CEO), Michal Yaacobi, Arnon Toussia-Cohen, and Dr. Noah Liel-Cohen. According to CB Insights, the company has raised at least $19 million to date from companies that include Connecticut Innovations, XTX Ventures, Downing Ventures, DEFTA Partners, and Philips.

DiA Imaging Analysis offers seven FDA-cleared products and partnerships with 11 leading channels, such as GE Healthcare, Philips, and IBM Watson.

“This is yet another acknowledgment of DiA’s efforts automating the way clinicians analyze ultrasound images at point-of-care and in the Echo Lab. DiA is continuously expanding its product lines to support additional clinical applications, and we look forward to introducing our upcoming new offerings in 2022,” said CEO Goldman-Aslan in a statement.

Sweetch

The Tel Aviv-based mobile health platform Sweetch increases patient adherence across various aspects of disease management and improves clinical outcomes for people with chronic conditions. Sweetch says it is the first to combine AI and EI (emotional intelligence) to learn patients’ real-life behavior patterns and optimize engagement

Founded in 2013, one of the company’s offerings is an AI-based platform that seeks to identify those at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

The company’s proprietary Just-in-Time-Adaptive-Intervention (JITAI) technology converts millions of data points originating from an individual’s smartphone and other connected devices into hyper-personalized recommendations in just the right tone, time and real-world context to catalyze long-term behavior change as part of their daily routine.

“We are proud to be named to CB Insights’ DH150 list, one of the highest recognitions a digital health startup can receive,” said Yoni Nevo, CEO of Sweetch, tells NoCamels. “We are rapidly growing as we achieve our mission to positively impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people with chronic conditions, and we welcome many new employees to our team in 2022.”

Lumen

Lumen is a handheld, portable device to accurately measure metabolism. The company uses a CO2 sensor and flow meter to determine the CO2 concentration in a single breath, in less than a minute, which was previously only possible through an hour-long lab test. This indicates the type of fuel your body is using to produce energy. Lumen also includes an application that acts as a virtual nutritionist, providing dietary and exercise recommendations based on the user’s metabolism.

The Tel Aviv-based startup was founded as Metaflow in 2014 by Daniel Tal, Dror Ceder, and Avi Smila, the founders of social toolbar app developer Wibiya and twin sisters Michal and Merav Mor, athletes who compete together in Ironman competitions and ultra-marathons.

According to CB Insights, the company has raised at least $16 million in funding from companies like Legend Capital and Softbank Ventures Asia.

“We’re thrilled to be recognized as an innovative leader in the digital health space by CB Insights. Our mission is to make people metabolically healthier through our groundbreaking technology as we grow towards becoming the largest health platform of 1 million metabolism measurements a month,” says Daniel Tal Mor, CEO and co-founder of Lumen.

Theator

Israeli-founded surgical firm Theator works to leverage advanced AI and computer vision tech to improve the performance of a surgeon. It provides video analytics to enable surgeons to review and assess their work from pre-op preparation to post-op analysis at different angles.

The California-based company with an R&D center in Israel announced a partnership with the world-leading American academic medical organization, Mayo Clinic, to integrate its systems into a number of the center’s departments. It also raised a Series Series A funding round and was selected as one of CB Insights’ 100 Most Innovative AI Startups as well as one 10 ‘Hottest’ Startups In Israel, According To Wired, and as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2021.

SEE ALSO: Surgical Intel Startup Theator To Work With Mayo Clinic On Education, Training

Theator has partnered with medical institutions like McGill University Health Centre, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital), and leading surgical societies such as the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES).

Nym Health

Founded in 2018 by Amihai Neiderman and Adam Rimon, Nym Heath develops coding software that allows clinical data to be processed autonomously, efficiently, and accurately, the company says.

Deployed in more than 40 hospitals across the United States, Nym is reinventing medical coding for revenue cycle management (RCM). The Nym platform modernizes RCM using direct-to-billing, fully autonomous medical coding that reduces insurance denials and operational expenses, accelerates payment cycles, and maximizes audit readiness for healthcare providers.

“COVID has shown provider organizations that solely relying on people to perform business critical work is unsustainable. We saw demand for our platform surge amid the global pandemic when hospitals and urgent care centers across the US found they needed to work faster, smarter, and more efficiently under the most challenging of circumstances,” said Neiderman, Nym’s CEO. “We are thrilled to have Addition join us and work alongside all of our investors to aggressively grow and scale Nym, leveraging our clinical language understanding engine to revolutionize the medical billing code process.”

Empathy

Empathy is an Israeli-founded startup that provides a new financial technology application and emotional guide that aims to address the set of opposite needs that fall upon the bereaved, including managing a maze of bureaucracy and coping emotionally with the pain of loss. The company launched in April with $13 of seed funding and raised $30 million in October for a total of $43 million to date.

Headquartered in New York and Tel Aviv, the company was founded by Ron Gura and Yonatan Bergman.

The company recently said it has established a partnership with America’s largest mutual life insurance company, New York Life, to expand the life insurance offering beyond financial peace of mind and include logistical and emotional support to families as well.

Vocalis Health

Israeli-founded startup Vocalis Health is a company pioneering AI-based voice biomarkers in healthcare. Founded in 2019 in the merger of two early-stage Israeli AI healthtech firms Beyond Verbal and Healthymize, the company’s products are cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA.)

Earlier this year, the company’s COVID-19 screening tool, VocalisCheck, received a CE mark, becoming the first device to receive CE mark approval for the medically intended use of screening for COVID-19.

Last November, the company announced a partnership with the Mayo Clinic, a leading American academic medical organization to research and develop new voice-based tools to screen and detect patient health.

The clinical validation will use Vocalis Health’s proprietary software, operated from any connected voice platform – mobile, computer, tablet – to analyze patients’ health based on voice recordings.

Vocalis Health and the Mayo Clinic previously worked together on research to establish the vocal characteristics of PH. In this new collaboration, the Mayo research team will conduct a prospective clinical validation study to further develop the vocal biomarkers.

c2i Genomics

C2i Genomics offers post-surgery monitoring of cancer recurrence and progression by analyzing subtle changes in the pattern of the tumor’s DNA.

C2i’s liquid biopsy is a tool for cancer tumor monitoring. It works by identifying subtle changes in genetic patterns across the entire tumor.

Founded in 2019 by Israelis Ezra Sofer, Asaf Zviran, and Boris Oklander, the startup has offices in New York and Massachusetts and an R&D center in Haifa.

In April, the company raised $100 million led by Casdin Capital.

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