Sheba Medical Center in Israel will leverage GE Healthcare technology to enhance its quality of care and digital healthcare operations. The two signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on the endeavor, which will specifically focus on data-driven cardiology, remote pregnancy monitoring and molecular imaging.

Sheba expects the agreement to help its clinicians make faster, more targeted and informed decisions for diagnosing, treating and monitoring patients, while providing GE with a bigger role in the care offered in Israel. "This agreement will allow Sheba and GE to be stronger together, and it's just the start of our journey,” said professor Yitshak Kreiss, director general of Sheba Medical Center, in a statement.

The partnership will be guided by four principles: digital health, open innovation, the international global healthcare ecosystem and building innovation infrastructure.

The ARC Innovation Center at Sheba and GE will combine their individual skills in research and development as well as clinical proficiencies to provide tools that Sheba can use to improve patient-centered care and its precision medicine initiatives.

GE currently employs over 600 people working in research and development in Israel, according to Jewish News Syndicate. In addition to helping it further improve patient care, the agreement expands this footprint.

"This collaboration will unite GE Healthcare's cutting-⁠edge healthcare technologies with Sheba's clinical expertise to develop and deliver new AI-⁠driven technologies that help advance precision health in molecular imaging," said Erez Levy, general manager of global molecular imaging and managing director at GE Healthcare Israel. "These technologies will help provide clinicians with the information they need to make more personalized care decisions for their patients and hopefully help improve patient outcomes."

Other companies are also looking to play a bigger role in the digital healthcare landscape in Israel. Back in August, Alphabet’s Verily opened a new research and development center there that will focus on applying AI to address biomedical problems, including applications in endoscopy, minimally invasive surgery and other imaging modalities.

As part of this, Verily plans to advance early research conducted by Google Health and Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center on the application of AI in the detection of colonic polyps.

In addition, Rambam Healthcare Medical Center became the first medical center last summer in Israel to use virtual and augmented reality to plan and perform operations for neurosurgery and pediatric neurosurgery patients. It used the technology of Israeli-American company Surgical Theater, and can now plan surgeries and navigate via 3D technology, instead of relying on 2D CT and MR scans.

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