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7 Top Tech Inventions Born of Conflict

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Israel’s painful reality of 66 years fighting off bullets, grenades, missiles and bombs could easily have led to a spirit of despair and defeat. Instead, living with the constant threat of war has spawned an extraordinary culture of Israeli military research and development.

This R&D under seemingly impossible circumstances is responsible for extraordinary innovations for the battlefield that have been transformed into technologies used worldwide to save lives, guard against cyber-attacks, simplify mobile communications and lots of other everyday needs.

“How do you approach a complex problem and solve it? We do this in the Israeli Defense Forces every day,” said Iron Dome innovator Brig. Gen. Danny Gold in an interview with Israel Brain Technologies. “Many of the people involved in these types of projects, like the Iron Dome for example, then take their skills to industry. What they learned about putting together complex multidisciplinary solutions serves them well in fields such as high-tech and brain-tech.”

Some of the most notable successes have come from Rafael Development Corporation (RDC), which incubates and commercializes products based on high-tech defense technologies developed at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, in cooperation with Elron Electronic Industries. Ebit Systems, a large defense electronics/electro-optics firm, also spins off many once-military technologies.

Medical devices deserve special mention, says D. Todd Dollinger, chairman and CEO of the Trendlines Group, which invests in, incubates and supports early-stage, high-promise medical and agricultural technology companies in Israel.

“Israel is a major player in this area, to the point where a few years ago MedTech Insights estimated up to 50 percent of all medical devices in the world can be traced back to the state of Israel,” Dollinger says. Indeed, the startup nation leads the world in medical device patents per capita.

He explains that signal acquisition and signal processing technologies developed by the military to acquire and process data intelligently led directly to the booming medical devices industry in Israel.

We’ve chosen 20 outstanding and diverse examples of Israeli innovation stemming from the military sector.

1. PillCam

Given Imaging, the company behind the famous PillCam — a capsule with two tiny video cameras that enables visualization of patients’ intestines without the need for endoscopy – was founded by Gabi Iddan, an IDF-trained engineer. He used miniature missile-guiding technology to craft this groundbreaking medical-imaging device.

2. Emergency Bandage (a.k.a. Israeli Bandage)

Former combat medic Bernard Bar-Natan invented the Emergency Bandage, considered an essential item in first-aid kits around the globe. Its innovation is a built-in pressure bar to stop bleeding. Developed through Israel’s Technology Incubator Program, the Emergency Bandage saved so many US lives in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom that it became known as the Israeli Bandage in the North American market. This product was used by Arizona emergency responders to treat Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords after she was shot in January 2011.

3. DiskOnKey USB flash drive

Dov Moran, the legendary serial entrepreneur from whose fertile mind grew the DiskOnKey, the DiskOnChip and other ubiquitous computing devices, got much of his knowhow from the Israeli navy, as director of its microprocessors department. His M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers company was acquired by SanDisk in 2006 for $1.6 billion. Moran also invented the first small modular smartphone, Modu, which didn’t catch on — but its patents were acquired by Google for its upcoming Ara modular phone.

4. Selman Surgical Rehearsal Platform

Retired Israel Air Force officers Moty Avisar and Alon Geri translated their experience with flight simulators into a revolutionary neurosurgery simulator that lets brain surgeons rehearse challenging microsurgical procedures before making a single incision. The system generates 3D images from the patient’s CT and MRI scans, and provides a preview of how surgical instruments will interact with the patient’s tissue and how the delicate brain structures will respond. It was launched at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons in October 2012 and is named after Dr. Warren Selman, the surgeon who commissioned the former officers to devise the system.

5. Visual-ICE

This is the newest product from Galil Medical, a world-leading developer and manufacturer of innovative cryotherapy platforms based on cooling technologies taken from the tip of the head of Rafael missiles. Visual-ICE and other Galil products provide a minimally invasive, easy-to-use system to precisely destroy solid tumor cancers of the kidney, lung, bone, liver and prostate, and they also enable nerve ablation for pain management.

6. Solo Insulin Delivery System

Medingo, the company that developed this state-of-the-art miniature, lightweight, tube-free remote-controlled insulin micro-pump for people with diabetes, was fully acquired by Roche for $200 million in 2010. Medingo’s approach was based on a variety of sophisticated technologies stemming from military applications, and was incubated at RDC.

7. Cardiac catheterization

A computer-vision tracking mechanism developed for air force pilots at Elbit led to the miniaturized 3D cardiac mapping and navigation technology built inside the revolutionary catheters made by Biosense Webster, an Israeli company acquired by Johnson & Johnson for $500 million. These devices help cardiovascular surgeons navigate within the body with unprecedented levels of insight, precision and safety to better diagnose and treat cardiac arrhythmias. (Israel21c)

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