How much are the Israeli digital medical data files of each patient, gathered over decades, worth to the world's leading pharmaceutical companies? Opinions on this subject are divided and change from time to time. Shortly before and during the Covid pandemic, the prevailing consensus was that databases gave the Israeli biomedical sector a huge advantage and were a factor that would attract the activities of leading companies here. These expectations were only partially realized, but this week an agreement was signed that nevertheless gives hope for leveraging the country's wealth of knowledge.
AstraZeneca has launched the Beam – Illuminating Healthcare Through Data Center with the School of Public Health and School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, and the Leumit and Meuhedet health funds. This is the second research center of its kind established by the company in the world.
The center will use data collected from health insurance companies and anonymized, and will allow AstraZeneca to use the data to better understand disease mechanisms, new treatment methods and how to improve patient's quality of life. University researchers will help the company study the databases.
In recent years, the ability to analyze real-world data has improved due to AI tools and computational power. Studying real-world data is now considered an important complementary tool to clinical trials, and it makes it possible to understand the effectiveness of drugs in patients with several diseases or in elderly patients who were not included in clinical trials; to test combinations of drugs or test treatment methods against each other, and not just against a control group receiving a placebo treatment. It is also possible to identify rare side effects, distinguish between patients who are expected to respond to treatment or not, or to personalize treatment. The databases can also be used to understand the economic value of a treatment in a particular group of patients.
The center will be headed by Tel Aviv University's Prof. Gabriel Hudik. He says this is an innovative center in several aspects: "Firstly, in a triangle of industry, academia and health services that combine forces to promote research and medical services. Secondly, investment in improving the excellent databases of the health funds in order to enable higher-level research, and thirdly, the use of federated learning that will enable research collaboration between organizations without sharing data. This is to ensure complete data privacy. This is a significant step forward in the world of data science in the health sector."
AstraZeneca Israel CEO Ohad Goldberg added at the launch of the project: "Through collaborations between academia, industry and health funds, we will be able to promote in-depth research and data-based learning, better understand the needs of patients today, and develop medical solutions that will benefit them in the future."
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on April 28, 2025.
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