Start-up Contest

Professor Yitshak Kreiss has been Director General of Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer since 2016.
Since assuming the role of Director General in 2016, Professor Kreiss is leading the transformation of Sheba Medical Center into the “City of Health” – from strategic planning and hospital design, to operations, policy and leadership. When completed in the years to come, the “City of Health” will become the global model for the “hospital of the future”.

He was recently ranked as the 5th most influential person in Israel by TheMarker (an Israeli Business daily newspaper). Prior to assuming his position at Sheba, Professor Kreiss served in the Israel Defense Forces for nearly 30 years. He ascended from being a front line combat surgeon, through the chain of command, until assuming overall leadership of the Medical Corps, as the IDF’s Surgeon General.

Professor Kreiss was awarded a Doctorate of Medicine degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and completed his Internal Medicine residency training at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan. He holds a Master of Health Administration degree from the Business School at Tel Aviv University and a Master of Public Administration degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Professor Kreiss is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, Adjunct Associate Professor at the Hebrew University School of Medicine and Clinical Affiliate Professor at Florida Atlantic University. Professor Kreiss has treated victims in conflicts and wars, as well as numerous emergency and disaster situations all over the world. He has led and was the executive authority in charge of many emergency scenarios and humanitarian missions including: the creation of a field hospital for the Kosovo refugees in Macedonia; rescue mission for victims of a terror attack in Egypt; the head of the Israeli field hospital for earthquake victims in Haiti; humanitarian medical operation for the victims of the civil war in Syria; and the humanitarian medical mission for the victims of a typhoon in the Philippines. Professor Kreiss has received various awards for his outstanding contributions to world medical efforts during humanitarian crises during both war and peacetime, the most recent being, The Diplomatic World Humanitarian Award.

Professor Kreiss has displayed a consistent dedication to teaching, writing in academic publications and progressive leadership in international medical associations. His research in leadership and health management is based on the humanitarian operations he has led focusing on: health management of field hospitals; leadership and ethics; and medical care for disaster challenges. His research has contributed significantly to the development of current concepts and approaches and is widely acknowledged as one of the most insightful contributors to renowned publications focusing on the subject of medical relief in the course of natural disasters.

Professor Kreiss is married to Inbal and has three children: Liron (26), Guy (23) and Adi (18).

With over 15 years of marketing and management experience, Guy leads strategy, research, partnerships and engagements, product, and marketing and is responsible for day-to-day operations at Start-Up Nation Central. Previously, Guy was the Chief Marketing Officer of Start-Up Nation Central , responsible for Marketing and Business Development. Prior to joining Start-Up Nation Central, Guy served as the head of marketing for Amdocs Portfolio, where he helped leading service providers devise their marketing and pricing strategies to better differentiate themselves in the market. Guy transformed Amdocs’ marketing organization, leading it into the digital marketing era. Guy also worked at Kodak and Microsoft, where he won awards for marketing excellence.

Mr. Gura is the CEO and Chairman of Zebra Medical Vision, a deep learning medical imaging company that will enable scalable healthcare for the 2 billion people to join the middle class by 2025. Eyal is an Angel investor and previously venture capitalist with Pitango Venture Capital, the largest venture capital fund in the Middle East. Formerly, Co-Founder: PicScout (acquired by Getty Images); PicApp (acquired by Ybrant Digital); The Gifts Project (acquired by eBay). Adviser, WebTeb.com, the leading Arabic medical portal. Member, Advisory Board, Tmura.org. Member of the Board, Latet. Founding Member, Tovanotb.org.
Eyal is a faculty member at IDC’s Zell entrepreneurship program and a graduate of the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2014 Eyal was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Dr. Yair Schindel is the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of aMoon.
Previously, Yair served as the founding CEO of the State of Israel’s National Digital Bureau, responsible for digitizing governmental services and stimulating economic growth.
Yair is the founder of the MAOZ Network, an NGO building collaboration between Israel’s most influential leaders, with over 300 alumni dedicated to building collaboration between the private, social and public sectors.

EfA-Engineering for All developing RevDx system – the first programmable lab-on-hand to bring life-saving diagnostic to everyone-everywhere.

Since DH 2018, we’ve also won 1st prize at the eHealth contest ( March) , we’ve been chosen to participate in a startup delegation to Taipei @Taiwan (June) with startups selected from all over the world and we were approved by the Israel Innovation Authority to join eHealth Venture incubator program funding for the next two years after detailed due-diligence covering all the aspects of technology, innovation, markets, business models and more.

Since 2016 –  Aidoc has made giant strides in providing an actual AI solution for radiologists that can prove actual clinical value. Utilizing the 2 rounds of investment (total of $13Mil) the company has 2 commercially available product lines (detecting brain hemorrhages and C-Spine fractures – CE and FDA approved), has created an install base of 16 global health systems (over 50 medical facilities – read about Yale university here) while growing the company to over 50 employees.
The company’s comprehensive product roadmap is now applicable to over 80% of all CTs creating one of the largest annotated medical imaging databases in the world.  The company will be expanding to MRI and XR in Q1/19. Aidoc has established a team of world-class AI developers who release an AI solution for new pathologies every three months – faster than any other AI company in the market.
Last but not least – the three founders – Elad Walach, Michael Braginsky and Guy Reiner were on Forbes 30 under 30 list , they are seasoned contributors to major industry publications (see a few sample here Auntiminnie and Radiology today – as well as on our site) and the company recently was included in TIME magazines 50 genius companies for 2018.

Our unique way of thinking and deep understanding of light helps bring innovation to vision care.
Replacing all the optometric essential devices with software based solutions, our technology is a simple, user friendly app that delivers accurate optometry measurements on smartphones.

Since DigitalHealth.il contest 2015, we have experienced tremendous growth, enabling us to accomplish meaningful achievements in many respects:

• We were the winners of the MHealth startup contest, the first TechCrunch startup contest to take place in Israel, and the prestigious Clearly Vision prize for initiatives aiming to solve the poor eyesight problem globally.
• We completed our second financing round led by eyewear industry strategic partners such as Rimonci Capital and DoctorGlasses of China, and the global leader in online eyewear – Lenskart of India.
• In 2017 we received FDA clearance and CE registration. CFDA registration is in process.
• We have officially launched our product, the “GlassesOn” mobile app, in several regions including the US, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, India and China, as well as inked partnerships with leading eyewear retailers worldwide.
• We are keeping true to our vision of making vision care accessible to anyone, anywhere, and have formed collaborations with voluntary organisations in China and India to provide free vision tests to underprivileged communities in these regions.

Telesofia Medical is proud to be the winner of the inaugural  DigitalHealth.il startup contest. Since, Telesofia is working with a variety of top pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and medical associations around the world.
The company received numerous awards, Including Frost & Sullivan’s best practice award for its novel patient engagement platform and Gartner “Cool vendors” for health care providers.  Telesofa makes medical information clear using personalized videos that are automatically generated based on clinical data, instructions and guidelines. The company is supporting a wide variety of content applications from simple prescription explanatory videos (for over 10,000 products), via specialty medications patient support programs  to discharge instructions and procedure preparations. Winning the Digital Health.il award definitely opened doors and helped us start a journey to making medical information clear.

Desney is General Manager of Microsoft Healthcare, with specific responsibilities for Microsoft’s clinical productivity tools, medical devices, and life sciences agenda. He has worked on and shipped various versions of Microsoft Windows and Office, the Microsoft Handwriting Recognition Engine and Tablet Input Panel, Xbox Kinect, and most recently the Microsoft Band. Desney also holds an affiliate faculty appointment in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington.

Desney received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, spent a couple of years in the Singapore Armed Forces, and later earned his PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. Desney has published more than 100 scientific papers, garnering over 10,000 citations, and has been granted over 80 US patents. He was honored as one of MIT Technology Review’s 2007 Young Innovators Under 35 and a 2012 Kavli Fellow by the US National Academy of Sciences. He was named one of SciFi Channel’s Young Visionaries at TED 2009, as well as  Forbes’ Revolutionaries: Radical Thinkers and their World-Changing Ideas for his work on Whole Body Computing

a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins and a member of the firm’s Litigation & Trials Department, has broad experience over her 30-year career at the firm, representing diverse industries in government investigations and civil lawsuits involving the collection, use, handling and security of valuable and sensitive personal or corporate data.  Within the health sector, Jennifer acts as outside counsel to cyber and privacy counsel to leading healthcare providers, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, strategic investors, and many emerging companies, shaping products and offerings within complex U.S. regulatory frameworks, and leading the response to government investigations of data practices.

Karen Thompson is Assistant Vice President in the Strategy & Innovation Group at HCA Healthcare.  She joined the company in 2006. In her current role, one of Karen’s key responsibilities is as co-chair of a Gate Review Committee which is charged with vetting most large-scale strategic IT portfolio of nearly $100M annually, in support of HCA’s growth strategy, prior to approval by the company’s senior executives. Over the years, she has served as the corporate business lead responsible for incubating and developing emerging enterprise strategies such as rural outreach, telehealth, consumer engagement and digital services.

Prior to HCA, Karen was senior director and chief of staff to the president/COO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, where she assisted his leadership team in setting a new energized vision for the company.  While at BCBSMA, Karen was chosen as one of 10 leaders to design and introduce a new corporate strategic planning process and revise incentive plans designed to change organizational behavior.

Karen is a skillful coalition builder, experienced at building strategic partnerships with business, civic and community organizations. She currently serves on the boards of the HCA Corporate Foundation and Nashville Public Television. She is co-creator and co-chair of Nashville’s bi-annual Hack for the Community volunteer event, which provides pro-bono expertise from employees representing numerous local companies to design technology prototype solutions and education to over 40 local non-profits, valued at nearly $1M. Her commitment to the community was recently recognized by being selected as 1 of 9 leaders representing Nashville for Harvard Business School’s 2018 Young American Leaders Program.

With an MBA from Simmons University, and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Bentley University, Karen is committed to continuing education and professional development for herself, and for the people she serves. She is a mentor to start-ups and entrepreneurs, and she is an award winning author.

Our unique way of thinking and deep understanding of light helps bring innovation to vision care.

Replacing all the optometric essential devices with software based solutions, our technology is a simple, user friendly app that delivers accurate optometry measurements on smartphones.

Since DH2015, we have experienced tremendous growth, enabling us to accomplish meaningful achievements in many respects:

• We were the winners of the MHealth startup contest, the first TechCrunch startup contest to take place in Israel, and the prestigious Clearly Vision prize for initiatives aiming to solve the poor eyesight problem globally.
• We completed our second financing round led by eyewear industry strategic partners such as Rimonci Capital and DoctorGlasses of China, and the global leader in online eyewear – Lenskart of India.
• In 2017 we received FDA clearance and CE registration. CFDA registration is in process.
• We have officially launched our product, the “GlassesOn” mobile app, in several regions including the US, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, India and China, as well as inked partnerships with leading eyewear retailers worldwide.
• We are keeping true to our vision of making vision care accessible to anyone, anywhere, and have formed collaborations with voluntary organisations in China and India to provide free vision tests to underprivileged communities in these regions.

Dr. Benny Zeevi is a Managing General Partner at Tel Aviv Venture Partners and DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures and leads the funds Life Science investments.

Dr. Zeevi is a physician specialized in interventional pediatric cardiology. Prior to joining DFJ TFV in 2003, Dr. Zeevi was the Vice President Business Development & Medical Director of Card Guard AG since 1998.

In 2012-15 Dr Zeevi was the Co-Chairman of the IATI – Israel’s largest non-profit umbrella organization for the High-Tech and Life Science sectors (http://www.iati.co.il ), Co-Chairman of the IATI Biomed Conference 2012-2017, and Co-Chairman for the DigitalHealth.IL conference in 2015-2019. Dr. Zeevi is deeply involved in the Israeli life sciences and digital health industries.

Dr. Zeevi is the Founder and Co Director of an Executive Program for Biotechnology and Medical Device Entrepreneurs and Managers, based on International faculty, at the Faculty of Management of Tel-Aviv University (http://biomedmanagement.tau.ac.il) and serves on the advisory board of the Faculty of Management at Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Zeevi serves as the chairman of the board and a board member of 9 life sciences companies. Dr. Zeevi is an advisor to Startup nation Central on digital health (https://www.startupnationcentral.org). Dr. Zeevi is a member of the National Council of Digital Health and Innovation in Healthcare Services at the Ministry of Health, Board Member, Israel National Tissue Bank, and Member of the National Steering Committee on the use of Healthcare Big Data. Dr. Zeevi is a board member of Sheba Medical Hospital TTO. Dr. Zeevi is also a mentor at Microsoft Ventures Accelerator and Israel Brain Innovation and is on the advisory board of Sanara Ventures.

Dr. Zeevi is a certified Pediatric Cardiologist. From 1990-1998 he was Director of Pediatric Catheterization Unit, Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Israel. Dr. Zeevi was a fellow and a visiting Professor and part-time clinical staff at the Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston. His credentials include over 60 peer-reviewed scientific articles, in addition to various chapters in textbooks and invited reviews and editorials in pediatric cardiology journals. His contributions have been acknowledged in 1993, when he received the Liberman prize for significant contributions to the evaluation and treatment of children with congenital heart disease.

Dr. Zeevi holds a M.D. degree (Magna Cum Laude) from the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel.