38 “When it comes to the story of national genomics databases, which other countries have been building for years, it’s easy to think that Israel’s will be just another footnote,” says Prof. Gabi Barbash, the former CEO of Tel Aviv Sourasky (Ichilov) Medical Center and current director of the Psifas National Genomic Medicine Initiative, based in the Nanotechnology Building at Bar-Ilan. “But when you realize how unique our country is, especially with regard to its healthcare system, you see that what we’re actually doing is writing the next chapter for the world.” Psifas, which means “Mosaic” in Hebrew, is a precisionmedicine collaboration among Israel’s universities, Israel’s Ministry of Health, the Israel Innovation Authority, the Digital Israel Bureau, the Medical Corps, the Ministry of the Treasury, and the country’s biomedical industry. By collecting and processing health data and biological samples from hundreds of thousands of Israeli volunteers, data and health-informatics scientists from Psifas, Bar-Ilan, and other universities will fuel academic and industry research intomore effective therapies. Moreover, by leveraging the power of artificial intelligence—a field inwhich Bar-Ilan is a national leader, and a key reason for its having been selected to house the project from among all of Israel’s universities—Israeli researchers hope to detect the genetic variations that may one day result in disease. And fortunately, they have a head start. “Israel has several key advantages when it comes to genomics data,” Barbash says. “For starters, Israel’s population is ethnically extremely diverse, much more so than in other countries. This means that the data will be a treasure trove for our understanding of human history, biology, and health disparities.” Small State, Big Data, and Outsized Impact for Healthcare The Psifas PersonalizedMedicine Project
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