Gaza war fueling groundbreaking Israeli medical innovations

More than 12,000 soldiers have been injured both physically and psychologically in over 14 months of war.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Israel-Hamas war has led to hundreds of deaths on the battlefield and over 12,000 injuries, both physical and psychological – and many medical breakthroughs and innovations to treat them.

Mediwound, based in Yavne, uses enzymes extracted from pineapple stems to rapidly remove dead skin, called eschar, from third-degree burns, such as those caused by exploding Hamas or Hezbollah booby traps.

Because it is a topical treatment, it obviates the need for surgical removal of the eschar, which is both painful and can leave deeper scarring. It also speeds the healing process.

Although 3D printing has been around for years, hospitals’ prosthetics departments have made significant progress in their complexity, and the turnaround time for producing them has gone from weeks to mere hours.

Using robotic technology during surgery also isn’t new, but it has taken a leap forward since the war began as well.

A guidance system made by Medtronic Israel is being used in Hadassah Hospital to turn long and complicated surgeries into minimally invasive procedures, including one where a bullet was successfully removed from a soldier’s spine in a way that prevented paralysis or nerve damage.

Over a third of the injuries are psychological in nature, ranging from depression to psychosis to PTSD, all conditions that often become completely debilitating.

The sheer number of those wounded psychologically is daunting, and there are not enough mental health professionals in Israel to help them in a timely manner.

LIV is an AI-driven clinical support system designed in collaboration between Sheba Medical Center, Microsoft, and accounting giant KPMG to jumpstart the treatment process.

It can interact with patients from their homes 24/7, asking them personalized and detailed questions, such as what bothers them and how they react to different circumstances, to create a complete picture of their condition.

It can also monitor facial expressions and voice frequencies and access myriad relevant electronic records, all to provide a complete clinical summary to physicians so that they can diagnose correctly and quickly and provide the necessary medical support.

A self-guided app to help prevent PTSD was developed at the Samueli Initiative for Responsible AI in Medicine and the Psychological Trauma Research Lab at Tel Aviv University, also together with Microsoft engineers. It is based on the EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) method.

On a different psychological front, phantom pain, which is created when the brain keeps telling a non-existent limb to move but it doesn’t respond, affects many of the hundreds of IDF amputees who lost their limbs in Gaza or Lebanon.

Israeli startup 6Degrees has invented the MyMove system, which delivers significant pain relief through playing games on a VR headset. The player “uses” a virtual limb, thereby tricking the brain into believing its signals are being answered.

These and many more innovations can obviously be used in the civilian sector as well, and some of the companies have already seen their stocks rise and interest from investors piqued, lending a small silver lining to the hellish results of the war Israel has been fighting for over 14 months and counting.

amputeesIDF soldiersIsraeli medical innovationIsraeli medical technologyPTSD