The Israeli companies at the crossroads between medicine and technology

• Author: ROSSELLA TERCATIN
• Published date: 13 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

All of them were developed by Israeli companies at the crossroad between medicine and technology, and all of them offer solutions to protect people's health in ways that were never before thought, Theranica CEO Alon Ironi, Sonovia CTO Liat Goldhammer and Nayacure CEO Dr. Shahar Cohen said at The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in conversation with senior health analyst Maayan Hoffman.

In 2019, hundreds of meters of special textiles were sitting in a research and development facility in Germany. Two years and a pandemic later, Sonovia has sold over one million masks made of the special fabric that features anti-pathogenic particles, and is over 99% effective against bacteria and viruses, including the coronavirus.

"We use ultrasonic power to actually embed active ingredients onto fabrics, turning them into a very effective shield against a wide variety of pathogens, bacteria [and] viruses," Goldhammer said. "Upon contact with the fabric, the viruses are disabled, the bacteria exterminated."

Sonovia is planning to offer their technology in all forms of textiles to hospitals and hotels, but also for use in plane and car seats, she added.

Theranica's products are also in use. Already approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, their Nerivio device "helps the body and the brain be more precise to treat themselves," Ironi noted.

"There is a pain inhibition mechanism in our brain called CPM [conditioned pain modulation], which constantly processes signals coming from the periphery of the body, neural signals, deciding whether they require action or not," he explained.

"If these signals do require action, they become painful in order to drive us to do what we need, and if not CPM, is capable of aborting these sensations by means of releasing certain neurotransmitters," he further said. "It was recently found out though that for many people, this mechanism is deficient and does not really function as it should."

The company's technology is capable of triggering the procedure externally by providing a specially engineered electrical signal that activates the pain inhibitory pathway.

Asked about the hesitancy that health authorities and systems often show in adopting new therapies based on technology – as opposed for...