The Media Line: ‘The Future of Health and Medicine Is Coming Faster Than You Think’—From Israeli Labs to Global Health Systems 

‘The Future of Health and Medicine Is Coming Faster Than You Think’—From Israeli Labs to Global Health Systems 

A delegation of U.S. and international health leaders visited Israeli research institutions and startups to examine how scientific discovery is translated into scalable medical technologies 

By Gabriel Colodro/The Media Line 

The bus entered the campus of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot under a clear sky. The air felt almost springlike for February in the Middle East, and a light breeze moved through the trees. The grass across the central lawns was bright and well kept, and researchers moved between buildings with coffee cups in hand, conversations unfolding along the paths. Only the visible damage to one of the buildings, still marked by the Iranian missile strike that had destroyed dozens of laboratories months earlier, interrupted the sense of routine. 

The nearly 40 health executives stepping off the bus were part of a joint delegation organized by Israel Tech Mission in collaboration with 8400 The Health Network, a global network of health sector leaders working to strengthen Israel’s medical innovation ecosystem and expand its international reach. Investors, founders, advisors and operators from the United States and other markets had come with a shared focus: understanding how discoveries developed in Israeli laboratories move from research benches into global health systems. 

“I feel so proud and happy about what is occurring here and what’s coming out,” Al Kinel told The Media Line. “I’m excited to be able to help take those innovations and get them out to the world and help let people learn about them.” 

Kinel works in health technology consulting and founded the firm Strategic Interests. He also leads the New York Israel Chamber of Commerce, which promotes commercial and research ties between Israel and the United States. Much of his work, he explained, centers on helping medical innovation move beyond early promise and into actual adoption within the U.S. system. “There are people that are going to be supportive and helpful and we will figure out how to work with them to help us be successful, and then there’s the undecided,” he said. “I want them to understand the value of the innovation of Israel and how it’s changing the world in Tikkun Olam.” 

He did not avoid the broader climate in which that effort takes place. “Unfortunately, we’re in a spot in a world where there’s people that are going to hate us and will never want to listen,” he said. “That’s not our audience.” The focus, in his view, is on those open to evidence and collaboration. In that sense, exporting medical technology is not simply economic activity. It becomes a form of engagement grounded in outcomes. “If we can align, we will probably be even way more impactful than we each could in our own individual way,” he added. 

Where Kinel emphasized alignment, Sam Moed spoke about structure. 

As a member of the global board of 8400 The Health Network, Moed described the organization’s work as operating along two tracks. “We are very focused on supporting and strengthening the healthcare system in Israel,” he told The Media Line, “but at the same time, we are building bridges globally.” 

For him, those bridges are practical. Israel generates a significant volume of early-stage medical innovation, but scaling requires access to global capital and markets. “The United States is the largest source of life sciences capital in the world,” he said. Without engagement with that ecosystem, promising technologies can stall before reaching patients. 

He sees the current moment as particularly consequential. “I am very optimistic about the magnitude of disruptive innovation that is coming out of Israel,” he said. The ambition, he suggested, is not marginal improvement but positioning healthcare alongside cyber and defense as one of Israel’s defining pillars. “We want healthcare to be one of those pillars.” 

Local challenges, he added, often drive globally relevant solutions. Referring to trauma care and mental health innovation, Moed noted that lived experience has shaped technologies now attracting international interest. “Some of the innovation agenda is driven by the problems we face here,” he said. In that way, the country’s constraints have produced exportable expertise. 

Across the week, the group moved through research institutions, nonprofit innovation hubs and private sector organizations. The focus was less on branding and more on mechanics: how discovery becomes product, how regulation is navigated, how companies scale. 

At the Weizmann Institute of Science, discussions centered on translational pathways. Researchers described designing studies backward from proof of concept and regulatory milestones rather than forward from curiosity alone. The conversation was practical, grounded in execution and commercialization discipline. 

Lee Shapiro’s relationship with Israeli health technology stretches back more than two decades. As co-founder of Chicago-based 7wire Ventures, he has watched the ecosystem evolve from early digital health experiments to mature global companies. “Israel had a very organized longitudinal record for every citizen in Israel, kind of cradle to grave health information that existed,” he said, recalling the early infrastructure that allowed companies to innovate around data long before it became common elsewhere. 

Today, he sees few comparisons. “There really is very little comparison,” he said. “Israeli companies and their technology base are far advanced from where European companies have been and what we see coming out of Asia.” At the same time, he believes awareness lags behind reality. “We need more stories told about the life-saving technologies,” he said. “I don’t think people realize that some of the great medications that they’re using every day have come from Israel.” 

Those medications, devices and digital platforms are embedded in health systems across North America, Europe and Asia. Their impact is measured in survival rates, early diagnoses and more efficient care pathways. Shapiro framed that reach culturally. “The spirit of Tikkun Olam in terms of healing the world is something that is part of the ecosystem here and is something that’s used in a way that can not only create great markets but also do good for the rest of the world,” he said. 

The conversation at Startup Nation Central broadened the lens further. There, attention turned to infrastructure: mapping innovation, matching investors with startups and supporting regulatory and market entry abroad. 

For Dr. Daniel Kraft, the pace of change is unmistakable. “The future of health and medicine is coming faster than you think,” Kraft, founder of Exponential Medicine and a physician-scientist working at the intersection of technology and healthcare, told The Media Line. “It’s not the technology, it’s often the convergence of a new operating system for the future of health and medicine.” 

He argued that what distinguishes ecosystems like Israel’s is density, the proximity of AI, digital health, diagnostics and clinical systems within a compact environment. That proximity accelerates iteration. “Health and medicine is a universal need and collecting point,” he said, suggesting that collaboration in healthcare often moves forward even when political relationships are strained. 

Innovation, in Rob Cronin’s view, carries another dimension. As founder of a New York-based communications firm specializing in health technology, he sees economic impact and diplomacy intersect. “What I see as the opportunity and the ultimate form of diplomacy and the mechanism by which we can fight anti-Semitism is an economic, innovation-based form of tikkun olam,” he told The Media Line. “It’s about improving people’s lives.” 

Michelle Garland, founder and CEO of Soul Search Partners, has spent more than two decades placing executive teams in venture-backed health technology companies. What struck her most was not only product or capital, but people. “The talent here is exceptional and the ideas are brilliant,” she told The Media Line. Sustained collaboration, she suggested, depends as much on relationships as financing. “We have to build more bridges.” 

By the end of the conversation, her reflection turned personal. “I have a bigger tribe than I knew of,” she said, visibly moved. The remark pointed to something that ran beneath the week’s formal meetings: a sense that professional ambition, identity and global health purpose were not entirely separate. 

Participants repeatedly described an ecosystem that is compact yet outward-facing, technically rigorous yet commercially disciplined. Israeli medical innovation is built with international application in mind. Therapies enter multinational trials. Digital platforms integrate into foreign health systems. Devices travel through supply chains that extend well beyond national borders. 

For Moed, that orientation remains central. “We want Israel to be seen as a global healthcare innovation powerhouse,” he said. The measure is not visibility, but penetration into global health systems. 

The broader impression that emerged from the week was less about individual companies and more about architecture. A country of fewer than ten million people has constructed a dense network of research institutions, capital access and translational expertise that consistently feeds into global markets. In practice, that structure gives tangible form to the idea of Tikkun Olam. Not as rhetoric, but as therapies deployed, systems adopted and patients treated far beyond Israel’s borders.