Intubation Solutions: Israeli Innovation Continues to Improve Emergency Medicine

Reported by Shalle McDonald for Front Page Jerusalem

Israelis are renown world-wide for their skills and innovation in the field of emergency medicine, as was demonstrated in the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake. An upcoming Israeli invention is poised to make another significant improvement in emergency care that will have patients and first-responders breathing easier.


Endo-Tracheal Intubation (ETI) is one of the most common procedures used in emergency medicine and anesthesiology. It is utilized to establish an airway when a patient fails to breathe independently. In the U.S. alone, there are over 25 million ETI procedures annually.

According to the emergency guidelines of the American Heart Association, intubation should not last longer than thirty seconds. Longer intubation procedures put patients in danger of hypoxia with consequent death or irreversible brain damage.

Today's laryngoscope medical devices have no means for calculating time. Yuval Bar, Israeli inventor, businessman and former paramedic, is working hard to change that.

Bar worked for more than 6 years as a paramedic for Israeli Magen David Adom and served as a medical instructor for emergency care at Tel Aviv Medical Center. He also participated in several international humanitarian medical missions organized by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

While training his students and foreign colleagues to provide emergency care, Mr. Bar found a simple yet elegant solution to the timing issue, a built-in timing device on the laryngoscope. He quickly filed a patent and built a team to transform his idea into a life-saving device.

“For a surgeon in the safe, controlled environment of an operating room, the lack of a timing device is not so critical. But for emergency providers such as a medic on the battlefield or a paramedic on the road, it could mean the difference between life and death.” Bar told FrontPage.

The malpractice research project of the American Society of Anesthesiologists demonstrates the lack of a timing device makes intubation procedures prone to dangerous mistakes. Analyses of 2,000 malpractice claims reveal that prolonged and persistent intubation attempts were the most common events that led to catastrophic respiratory events including brain damage and death.

Dr. Pinchas Halpern, Chairman of the Tel Aviv Medical Center's Emergency Department quickly joined the venture. With over 30 years of experience in the EMS field, he saw the potential medical and financial value the patent. Avraham Jaeger serves as Marketing consultant and engineer Ronny Shabbat, joined the team to help construct a prototype with funds awarded to Mr. Bar by TNUFA, Israel's Ministry of Industry Trade and Labor.

Bar now holds a second patent for what he termed the “Smart Blade,” a larygoscope fitted with a pulse oximeter monitor placed on the blade which will instantly indicate the patients values of oxygen saturation on the device.

Bar established, Intubation Solutions LTD (http://www.intubationsolutions.com/), and is in the phase of seeking investment partners to begin manufacturing. The U.S. Army and American EMS suppliers have already expressed enthusiastic interest.

“Several suppliers want to orders” said Bar, “We just need investments to begin production,” Despite the global economic downturn, Bar remains determined to get his start-up company off the ground and his devices to market.

SeGen Underwater Technology

Israel In Our Day Listen online: http://frontpagejerusalem.com/site/index.php
Reported by Shalle McDonald
Written by Kasey Barr

Israeli company, SeaGen, has developed a new solution to storing Liquefied Petroleum Gas in a manner that is far safer and environmentally friendly then the current steel storehouses that line the shores of many of the world’s port cities.

Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), refers to the gaseous liquids that are produced when processing natural gas and crude oil. The two main commercial bi-products are propane and butane. Propane and butane are widely used in fuels for certain types of ovens, grills, heating systems and vehicles.

Forty percent of the world’s consumption of LPG, about 100 million tons per year, is currently being stored in 16,000 storage sites throughout the world. These areas are considered increasingly vulnerable to accidents and attacks. Most storage units are near residential areas where any mishap has the potential to create mass human casualties in addition to devastating ecological damages.

Many companies are increasing security for their storage facilities to prevent possible terrorist attacks as well as investing in technologies to prevent accidental explosions. Land LPG storage devices are particularly dangerous because the liquefied petroleum gas is stored at a pressure much greater than that of the surrounding air.

Based on the use of underwater hydrostatic pressure, SeaGen Systems has developed an innovative underwater LPG storage terminal that maintains the gas in its liquefied form in a uniquely developed “smart” container system. The underwater system not only helps eliminate risks, but it is based on clean technology. Many of the existing storage units are old and rusting and often leak significant amounts of Petrolium which increase the risk of explosions during the transferring of LPG to carrier vehicles.

CEO of SeaGen, Ofir Sarid, claims that with the SeaGen solution, the gas stored off shore and under the water “has no chance of explosion.” Sarid explains, “If you have a spark around [a land] site there can be explosions and dead people… under water, there is no pressure difference between inside the tanks and underwater so no explosion could be possible.”

If a leak would occur, the gasses would simply bubble to the surface where they would simply be released into the air. Also, underwater smart tanks would be much more difficult to find and sabotage making the Sea Gen underwater storage devices a win-win product for both environmentalists and security forces.

Another attractive advantage to the underwater storage devices is the potential to free-up large plots of real-estate currently dedicated to storing LPG. Sarid claims that SeaGen will enable municipalities in most of the western countries to clear their shorelines of unsightly stainless steel storage devices and open the areas for real-estate investment.

SeaGen is privately owned and operates under the “Yozmot HaEmek” technological incubator. SeaGen is in the process of obtaining the necessary permits for its new installations and hopes to begin setting up its pilot site for an LPG underwater storage farm off the coast of Israel by the end of the year.

An Arab-Israeli Scientist at the forefront of cancer research

Could preventing cancer be as simple as taking your daily vitamins? Dr. Fuad Fares, and Arab-Israeli scientist, believes he is very close to producing an anti-cancer daily supplement. Fares has spend years studying ancient herbal treatments and his latest research is revealing what he believes is a plant with a new family of antioxidants powerful enough to reduce and even prevent the development of cancer cells.

Dr. Fares recently published results from his experiments, conducted at the Carmel Medical Center at the University of Haifa lab, which demonstrate that the unnamed plant compound has indeed stopped prostate and colon cancer in mice as well as in human cancer cells in vitro.

Dr. Fares injected a crude extract of the plant into a test group of mice as a preventative medicine before introducing them with cancer. Of those given the plan injection, 80% were able to fight off cancer as compared to only 20% of the mice not given the herbal extract. Fares proceeded with a second test which demonstrated that the mice infected with cancer, who were given daily doses of the plan extract, were able to reduce the tumors by 70 to 80%.

Similar tests were executed on human cancer cells in vitro with the same dramatic results. "Just used as an extract it seems to be effective," says Fares, who is currently working on purifying the substance which may lead to even more startling results and quite possibly a medical breakthrough.

Numerous scientific studies prove that antioxidants, such as lycopene found in tomatoes,  fight free radicals that lead to cancer. However, Fares' mystery plant with its supposed new family of antioxidants, may actually be able to prevent and reverse the disease that is affecting such a large percentage of the world's population.

According to Cancer Research UK, overall cancer rates have increased by one quarter since 1975. Each year 10.9 million people worldwide are diagnosed with cancer and each year an astounding 6.7 million die from the disease. Statistics reveal that more than 1 in 3 people will develop some sort of cancer in their lifetime. 

For the many people suffering with the disease, Dr. Fares' herbal remedy brings hope that future cancer treatments will no longer include intensive and intrusive procedures such as chemotherapy and radio frequency, but could quite possibly be as simple as a supplement.

Dr. Fares is also director of Modigene, a company he created while doing postdoctoral work at Washington University. He will soon apply for a patent, and if his compound is determined to be unique, he will reveal the name of the plant and begin producing and marketing the wonder herb.

Dr. Fares remains tight lipped about the name of his herb, but he does disclose one fact, it grows in Israel. If Fares' research is verified, accepted and marketed many people throughout the world will have yet another reason to refer to Israel as the land of miracles.

 Written for Front Page Jerusalem: Israel in our Day