Haifa's Rambam Health Care Campus struck a partnership deal with Stanford University Medical Center to encourage research and development entrepreneurship and collaborative projects, Israel Hayom discovered Wednesday.
The heads of the respective hospital agreed to the partnership in the interest of pooling medical resources, time and manpower as well as connecting Silicon Valley with Israel's burgeoning and innovative high-tech industry.
Stanford, one of the most advanced medical centers in the U.S., is a world leader in the medical field that boasts a long list of medical breakthroughs.
Rambam comprises 1,000 hospital beds and logs approximately 130,000 emergency room visits annually. It enjoys a modest annual budget of around $420 million, while Stanford, which boasts only 600 beds and 60,000 emergency room visits a year, has an annual budget of $7 billion. The two hospitals will allocate a shared budget to provide investment that will allow doctors and researchers to initiate new projects.
"The collaborative program will create a direct link of entrepreneurship and development between researchers from Haifa, startup companies and tech incubators and researchers at Stanford," said Rambam director Professor Rafael Beyar.
As part of the collaboration, Rambam and Stanford will also share their databases, facilitating big data research on a diverse population pool. The respective facilities' extremely large databases contain millions of medical cases spanning decades.
The medical information will naturally be protected by full medical confidentiality.
"I am proud to take part in this collaboration," Beyar said. "I am excited at the possibilities it will offer the fields of research and medicine in Israel."
Beyar added that "the gap between the two hospitals' budgets is a testament to the unusual strength and capability of Israel's public health system."
"I am convinced that this collaboration will strengthen both facilities and enable Israeli and international companies to productively engage in research and collaboration with the two bodies together," he said.
