"Medical research budgeting - a mockery of Resh"

This is what Rambam Hospital director Rafi Biar said at the annual biomedical engineering conference held today at the Technion. According to him, "the Ministry of Finance does not understand the importance of medical research," "the 'Discovery Tower' that we are establishing in Rambam is an essential project"; Technion president: "Animal experiments save lives"

"The annual government budget for medical research in Israel - NIS 7 million - is a mockery of Resh." This is what the CEO of the Rambam Medical Center, Professor Rafi Biar, said at the annual biomedical engineering conference, which was held at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion last week. Professor Biar said that he was happy about the participation in the conference of representatives from the various relevant sectors - academic, industrial, medical and municipal - but regretted the absence of the Ministry of Finance. "Unfortunately, the Ministry of Finance does not understand why medical research is necessary, and why the 'Discovery Tower' we are building here is an essential project. The regulator interferes with the conduct of clinical trials - which here take two years instead of three months - and researchers run away from here to conduct trials in places like India and Germany. What we have left is you, the people involved in the field, and your ideas. This is our oil.”

The conference was attended by engineers, entrepreneurs and doctors. The president of the Technion, Professor Peretz Lavi, said that "our main challenge today is to repel the wave led by those opposed to animal experiments. If this loud group continues its campaign without an adequate response, the end will come for medical research in general, and the development of medical technologies in particular.

"Those who oppose experiments, attack researchers and harm medical research, have become a very dominant group in the media. Our mission is to make it clear to the public that animal research saves human lives, simply like that."

"The field of medical technology has a promising future and a huge market," entrepreneur Shimon Ekhuiz said at the conference. "In Israel, despite the tremendous development, there is still a problem of financing entrepreneurship because of the high risk and the length of time required in developments in the field of medicine."

Eckhuis, 68, began his career as a physicist at Rafael, but developed into a successful entrepreneur. In the last decades he entered the medical field, and so far has invested in dozens of companies in the field of medical technology. "When I entered this field, I feared that we were already close to saturation. Except for Alcint, who was a pioneer in this field, there was almost nothing. Today, looking back, it is clear to me that I was wrong. About a decade ago, as a member of the committee of the OT, which discussed the question of whether a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering was necessary, I argued that it was an unnecessary degree because in the company I founded in this field, all the experts came from other fields."

About a year ago Ekhuiz established "Hammat Alon" in Kneam, which is dedicated to this field. "I urge you, those involved in the field, not to despair - there are new sources of funding, and there are investors who understand the tremendous potential that lies in this field. One can admire the amazing growth that has taken place here in the last decades - even compared to the 'normal' high-tech we know. There was the entry of large international bodies such as Philips and General Electric, and at the same time - private initiatives in which partners are entrepreneurs who grew up in large companies, doctors in hospitals, and engineers who came from completely different fields. This is an example of a field that grew in academia out of needs that arose in the field."

The Dean of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion, Professor Amir Landsberg, said that the connection between engineering and the life sciences is already an existing fact. "This connection is already a growth engine in the economy, academia, society and medicine. This field has grown exponentially, and according to CNN it is expected to grow by about 60% in the next decade. Out of an understanding of the importance of this connection, last semester we opened a joint program for medicine and biomedical engineering."

The Dean of the Rapaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion, Professor Eliezer Shalu, said that just as biomedical engineering is not possible without medicine, medicine is also not possible without biomedical engineering. "Today, the main progress in medicine is expressed in engineering developments and progress in the exact sciences. There is no doubt that the Technion, as a leading technological institution that includes a faculty of medicine, is an ideal place for the development of this essay."