Sheba Medical Center is a hospital in Ramat Gan, Israel. Its ARC program—Accelerate, Redesign, Collaborate—brings clinicians, researchers, startups, industry, academia, investors, and other medical centers together to develop and evaluate digital health tools.
ARC connects technology developers with the clinical setting where a tool might be used. Sheba says its hospital has operated digitally since 2004 and that ARC startups can work with hospital medical teams and data and may pilot technologies there. Pilots let clinical teams assess usability and fit with hospital workflows.
How a hospital pilot works
A health technology often needs more than a working prototype. A hospital can help a company identify a clinical problem, refine a product with clinicians, and test how it fits into workflows. Sheba describes a program supporting startups and offering opportunities to apply technologies within the hospital. Sheba reports approximately 20 to 30 startups in the program each year.
Companies pursue clinical evaluation and regulatory authorization for each product according to its intended use.
ARC in the wider research system
Israel’s health funds and hospitals maintain their own information systems and research arrangements. Separately, studies using Clalit data have examined real-world treatment outcomes.
ARC brings developers into a hospital setting where clinicians identify practical constraints and teams can refine technologies through pilots.
Read Sheba’s description of ARC, Sheba’s account of the startup program, and an example of research based on health-fund records.