Deputy-general of Hadassah Zeev Rothstein: Digital revolution has entered the medical world
There is a huge gap between the health system and our capabilities, especially our technological capabilities, according to Hadassah director-general Prof. Zeev Rothstein.
Speaking at the Maariv conference held in Jerusalem last Monday, Rothstein admitted that there are many warranted complaints about Israel’s health system.
“We’ve gone through a digital revolution, it’s hard to grasp how deep it entered into the world of medicine. We’re getting closer and closer to the day where everything that can be done in any hospital ward will be done at home through continuous monitoring, digital doctor and other accessories. You hear a lot about robots, about Big Data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, concepts that describe how one can learn about the individual as a result of the information that is stored on the masses,” said Rothstein.
He touted the ability of smartphone apps to assist in the health system and claimed that Hadassah was leading the way.
“The amount of applications that smartphones have today is enormous. using a smart phone, you can Remote handle matters, call for help, assist, and if we add wearable or injected sensors, So that the information will reach the cellular phone, it will become the most close doctor in the world,” he said.
“At Hadassah, we didn’t wait. We launched the application ‘my Hadassah’, which was designed to find the right doctor for the patient’s problem according to the symptoms, and to look for a suitable doctor scientifically based on Big Data. Later on, we aim to bring the medical community into the patient’s hospital room for a visit and connect the two worlds, which are so disconnected from each other”.
Hadassah is putting the issue of prevention at the top of its agenda, said Rothstein.
“It is best to leave the patients healthy rather then treat them when they are already ill,” he said. “Our problem is actually the huge gap between our abilities and what we can afford economically. The public ability to finance technologies is low in all Western countries but we hold the record. Today, Public medicine does not have what it takes to give the medical response in time. The real problem is the gap between public and private medicine, between the shortfalls in one and the surplus in the other. This is a problem that needs to be solved by reform, which will address the chronic deficits and the low availability of public service.”