Rafi Hofstein tells Claire O'Connell the Republic could learn much from his country in developing the industry
Cameras that you swallow, "virtual" scalpels and a virus that chews up brain tumours. These are just a few of the recent health-related products to come out of Israel, a country that has an extensive culture of innovation, according to Dr Rafi Hofstein, an Israeli expert in the business of bringing ideas from life sciences research into the marketplace.
"Ireland, like Israel, has identified the life science industry as its next flagship and is prepared to make serious commitment at various different levels," says Hofstein, who is president of Hadasit, the technology transfer company of Hadassah University Hospitals in Jerusalem, and co-chair of Biomed Israel, the country's national life science and technology convention.
Last week he visited Nova, University College Dublin's innovation centre, to promote more collaboration between the two countries, saying that Israel's strengths in innovation can complement Ireland's ability to translate inventions into products.
Israel has a thriving life sciences sector that currently supports around 700 start-up companies. It started to flourish in the mid-1990s when there was a plateau of new ideas in the established IT sector. "Everybody was looking for the new baby on the block," says Hofstein.
That turned out to be medical devices. "The simplest jump from IT and dotcoms was into medical devices, because people believed that the mental leap was rather short," he says.
Piggy-backing on the IT sector's incubation infrastructure and buoyed up by government and private investment, the Israeli life sciences mushroomed and now employs around 26,000 people, particularly in the areas of medical devices, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and health technology.
Innovation and creative thinking are central to this growth, says Hofstein, and with the highest number of medical devices patents per capita in the world, they are not short on ideas.
For example, Israeli start-up company Given Imaging has developed a pill-sized capsule that houses a tiny camera. A patient swallows the pill then goes about their usual day wearing a receiver belt to which the camera transmits thousands of images on its eight-hour journey through the intestine.
Doctors now use the technology to look at a range of conditions such as ulcers or inflammation in the gut, particularly in the small intestine, which can be difficult to access with more conventional endoscopy.
Other inventions from Israeli start-ups include a virtual scalpel, which uses ultrasound to trim tissue and incorporates a guiding system to show you how far you can go, says Hofstein.
He also describes how his own group is developing a method of using the Newcastle disease virus as a therapy to attack brain tumours.
So why, if Israel's innovative life sciences sector is doing so well, are they looking to collaborate with international partners like Ireland? It's about lifting ideas off the ground for use in industry, says Hofstein.
For example, Hofstein's own group turned to Galway-based company Creganna to develop a prototype of an invention that guides stents to locations in the body. "We can come up with the good ideas but when it comes to development we can need assistance," says Hofstein.
And he does not believe that competition should put people off collaborating, saying that countries need to think more creatively and complement each other in the long and costly process of bringing inventions to market.
This is where he sees the benefits of links with Ireland. For example, his own group is looking at a stem-cell based treatment for Parkinson's disease. "Nobody has really lifted the challenge of turning stem cells into products, it is all done at the minimal scale of academic laboratories," he says. "Now, if we have the right cells for the treatment of Parkinson's disease we need very many of these cells. And the question is how do you expand, store and ship them, and I know that Ireland is very strong in these areas. Here again is an example of how we can complement each other."
And the framework is already in place to facilitate such collaborations. In 1999, the Irish and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding, a willingness to work together at a government level in the area of biotechnology, says Dr Maurice Treacy, director of biosciences and bioengineering at Science Foundation Ireland.
"Let's say intellectual property was developed in Israel, there's the potential that we could do something with it here in Ireland - a lot of the obstacles to do that are out of the way," he says, noting the large potential for synergy between the two countries in areas such as medical devices and diagnostics.
He adds that Ireland can also learn from how the Israeli life sciences sector has been developed. In particular, there is a vibrant venture capital community that invests very specifically in the life sciences. "That would be a distinguishing factor that we are developing in Ireland but are not at the level that they have in Israel," he says.
"We need bigger funds that are focused on the life sciences sector, there is huge potential for growth and return."