Israel Brain Technologies

Advancing our understanding of the brain, and diagnosing and treating brain disorders, represent one of the greatest challenges of our time. Brain-related illness generates more healthcare costs and loss of income than any other area of health, and more than one billion families are impacted worldwide by the suffering caused by these disorders.

Critical unmet medical needs exist for almost every area of the brain and nervous system, and while there are important advances in neuroscience every day, acceleration of the development of effective research, diagnostic and treatment technologies is desperately needed.

The techno-economic 21^st century wave of neurotechnology is expected to have pervasive economic and social effects, influencing every aspect of our lives – with tools that will enhance human emotional, cognitive and sensory performance and serve as the new frontier in medicine.  This wave is no longer a dream, with emerging brain technologies already starting to alleviate brain-related human difficulties.

Neurotechnology today is truly a global industry, yet it represents the largest untapped medical market. Considering the promise of new treatments coupled with the size of the potential patient population, there are great opportunities for the dramatic growth of neurotechnology, and there are large rewards available for those who successfully nurture the industry.

Israel is well positioned to assume a global leadership role in the emerging neurotechnology industry with its innovation and proven track record in fields such as computer science, nanotechnology and brain research. Israel has a strong tradition of placing science and technology at the forefront of its economic development – helping the country gain its reputation as the “startup nation”.

Recognizing this opportunity, Israel President Shimon Peres has envisioned an initiative to launch Israel on a journey to become the world leader in Neurotechnology.  At his request, McKinsey & Company conducted an analysis of the Israeli brain research and technology landscape during 2010. Among its recommendations, the McKinsey report indicated that Israel is uniquely positioned to develop leadership in two areas of brain communication: the Brain Machine Interface (BMI) and therapeutic neuro-stimulation devices.

Israel Brain Technologies (IBT) is about making President Peres’ vision a reality. Using the McKinsey report as a roadmap, IBT is initiating and coordinating activities that will bring together academia, industry and all other related parties in order to pave the way towards the development of a successful, world-leading neurotechnology industry in Israel. IBT is a non-profit organization and will work both externally, promoting international collaboration and dialogue, and internally, accelerating local research, industry and innovation. 

To build on Israel’s strengths in technological innovation, entrepreneurship and excellence in neuroscience, IBT is launching programs aimed at supporting multi-disciplinary R&D collaboration, catalysing commercialization process and capabilities, and mitigating risk in the neurotechnology space.

B.R.A.I.N. Prize Competition – the Breakthrough Research And Innovation in Neurotechnology prize program is a prestigious global competition recognizing recent breakthroughs in brain technology on a path to commercialization, with a $1 million grant to support further development of the winning project. The competition launch, to be attended by President Peres, will be announced in Fall 2012.
Global Brain Technologies Conference – to be held in Israel in 2013, this event will bring together the global neurotechnology community and related stakeholders to Israel for discussion and presentation of current research and emerging technologies, and will facilitate collaboration. The finals phase and award ceremony for the B.R.A.I.N. Prize Competition will take place at this conference.
Flagship Research Program – IBT is developing promising applied research projects and seeking project partners for high-potential areas such as brain disorder diagnostics, brain-machine interface, neuromodulation, and brain-inspired computing.
Neurotechnology Incubator – we are a partner in the establishment of an incubator focused on accelerating brain technology startups.
Israel Brain Information Hub – IBT acts as a central knowledge base for the neurotechnology community, at the center of which is its online portal www.israelbrain.org, which includes a dynamic, searchable database of the Israel Brain ecosystem, and serves to strengthen networking capabilities for the entire stakeholder community in neurotechnology.