President of tomorrow

It isn't always easy to spot the most promising technologies for tomorrow. Sometimes it's even hard to say when tomorrow is. Are we talking about short term or long term? At the Israeli Presidential Conference Facing Tomorrow, which will open next month, 60 "enterprises of tomorrow" will be presented developments selected from a candidate list of 285 in the areas of environment, medicine, technology, transport, and society.

The products are at different stages of maturity. Some are only preliminary ideas, such as the product submitted by Rahamim Levi, the only one in the list submitted by an individual rather than a company. He proposes an interesting device: a bicycle helmet with a brake light at the back and indicator lights operated automatically by the rider's movements, for the convenience of those traveling behind. Other products are from well-known companies, some of them already considered leaders in their fields, such as NDS Group (Nasdaq: NNDS), Mobileye, Comsys, Runcom Technologies, Protalix Biotherapeutics, and Gamida Cell. Also on the list is Modu, founded by Dov Moran, which has been big on promises even before it has a commercial product.

The companies, which will display their wares at a special exhibition accompanying the conference, were selected by a panel of judges made up of senior figures from the universities, industry, and government. I decided to take a closer look at some of the less well-known products in medicine and technology. Some may become familiar technologies, while some will disappear as though they had never been, but could yet provide the ground from which developments by other new enterprises will spring.

GeneGrafts is developing a product that will electrically stimulate tissues to change their activity. Electrical stimulation of the heart (pacemaker) and of the brain is already accepted in the medical world, but while most companies in this field use mechanical devices to produce stimulation, GeneGrafts seeks to derive the stimulation by biological means. The idea is to take tissue from the patient's body, to change its electrical activity slightly through genetic engineering (all body tissue has some kind of electrical activity, depending on the genetic make up of its cells), and to transplant it close to the organ that requires stimulation. The transplanted tissue is supposed to act as a natural pacemaker or for stimulation in the brain. The product is about to enter clinical trials for the treatment of Parkinson's Disease.

Pilotless flying ambulance

The Aerospace Medicine Research Center at The Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies (founded by the Israel Air Force Association) has developed a pilotless aircraft for rescuing injured people and providing medical supplies. The MedUAV is built from very light materials and can transport four casualties with their equipment. The system can reach high speeds but can also hover, and it can land in built-up areas and continue moving on wheels. It is protected against gunfire and anti-aircraft missiles. It also carries a tele-medicine system for monitoring vital signs in evacuated people, the intention being that alongside every MedUAV operator will be a doctor who will supervise treatment of the patients.

Seeing through walls

Camero has developed a method of imaging people and things on the other side of brick, concrete, and wooden walls, for rescue operations, security, and espionage. The product uses UWB RF signals, turned into 3D images by image reconstruction algorithms and patented signal processing techniques. Camero started selling its product a year ago and it is in use with several police forces and military units.

Face to face

C-True identifies people by the oldest biometric recognition feature in the world the lines of the face. The company's system scans a person within half a second and builds a three-dimensional model of the face that it compares with a previous scan in its database.

The system can distinguish between a face and a mask. Identifying faces is considered a highly complicated task, even though our brain performs it every day. The company says the scanner is non-invasive and user-friendly. It will be launched commercially soon.

An Israeli-Palestinian virtual computer

As part of the general trend of transition to services that are not on the computer itself but on some server somewhere and accessed via the Internet, G.ho.st offers a complete computer (that is, all the usual applications and file storage services) free via the Internet, on a site that simulates a computer work environment. The product will be available to all comers from mid-2008.

The company's idea is not unique (Google and other companies offer something similar, although packaged a little differently), but what is particularly interesting is the Israeli-Palestinian collaboration in the company, which operates in parallel from Modi'in and Ramallah, where it employs 35 people and is one of the most notable employers in the software industry in the Palestinian Authority. The company's entrepreneurs and management are Israelis and Palestinians working side by side. The company has also set up a fund for encouraging use of computers among people who are still not exposed to them, both in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on April 24, 2008

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