What a year!
Activity in Israel’s tech sector continued to grow exponentially, raising over $25B in funding in 2021. The momentum of both the national and global ecosystems facilitated an unparalleled number of opportunities for development and growth; thanks to your support, ALYNnovation was able to capitalize on them to establish new institutional and strategic relationships, strengthen existing partnerships, and continue to consolidate our role as industry leaders in pediatric rehabilitation innovation.
We are excited to share our 2021 annual review with you, celebrating some of the more notable accomplishments from ALYNnovation and our partners over the past year.
We thank you once again for your partnership, and invite you to be in touch to further discuss our work and answer your questions. Please feel free to reach me directly via email or phone.
Wishing us all a year of good health and success,
Arie Melamed Yekel
General Manager, ALYNnovation
Phone: +972 (0)54 9266297
Email: ariemy@alyn.org
New Startup Partners of 2021
In 2021, ALYNnovation officially welcomed 2 new startup partners into our portfolio:
Cognishine is a platform that aims to assist health professionals to improve therapy and clinical outcomes with adaptable, ready-to-use materials that incorporate relevant real-world content that can be tailored to each client’s therapeutic goals and fields of interest in just a few clicks. These tools drastically shorten therapists’ required prep time and simplify the process of personalizing exercises and content for each patient, leading to improved patient experience, improved patient motivation and engagement, and improved clinical outcomes. Cognishine currently serves clinicians working with people with disabilities in four main areas -- cognition, communication, speech, and social-emotional difficulties.
ALYN Hospital is proud to partner with Cognishine to develop Cognishine Pro, their next-generation continuous therapy platform that can track patient performance at home and facilitates accurate, data-driven clinical decisions with AI-powered recommendations.
Augment Therapy is an interactive app for iPad that uses the medium of augmented reality (AR) to provide virtual pediatric rehab and remote patient monitoring across the care continuum. The software’s ability to recognised and track movement through the iPad’s camera makes it possible for the patient to watch their “avatar” physically interact with a virtual environment in games that encourage targeted movements.
Augment Therapy has partnered with ALYN Hospital to develop localization functionality in Arabic and Hebrew, and to execute their first overseas pilot to get user experience feedback from both patients and therapists. Augment Therapy is ALYNnovation’s first US-based startup partner, thanks to our collaboration with the KidsX consortium and accelerator!
And now for a sneak peek – ALYNnovation is in advanced partnership discussions with a third startup developing a platform for children with developmental delays that effectively helps them overcome hurdles to learning and practicing new behaviors. We always make sure to only share confirmed initiatives with you, so we will share more details about the company once the contract is signed, anticipated during Q1 ’22.
We are also proud to share that all three startups are led by incredible women founders!
We are very excited to be working with them, and look forward to announcing future updates on our collaboration.
2021 Collaboration Highlights
- ALYNnovation has become a fundamental partner of 8200 Impact’s Accessibility track, working together to stimulate the ecosystem of ability creation technologies, previous known as “assistive technologies.” By providing consultation during the program’s assessment of early-stage startups, we get a sneak preview and are among the first health institutions in Israel to recognize promising ability creation companies. Our partnership with 8200 Impact increases the chances of success of ability creation startups solving real-world issues.
- ALYNnovation has become active partners of HealthIL, Israel’s health and medical innovation community. Toward the end of 2021, ALYN Hospital launched a call for proposal in search of solutions to remotely identify changes in the neurological function of children with cerebral palsy by using advanced voice analysis algorithms.
- Our partnership with NeMO Labs (Italy), who focus on developing products for people with neuromuscular conditions, has continued to strengthen. ALYNnovation has initiated several projects with NeMO Labs over the past year, including the submission of an advanced research proposal to the EU in conjunction with the University College Hospital in London.
2021 Startup Achievements
- Wheelchairs of Hope successfully produced an initial prototype of a second-generation low-cost wheelchair for developing countries that includes improved upper-body support, as well as lean and tilt mechanisms for the legs and torso – for under $180. The company is now focusing on raising funds to finance the scaling of production.
- QNIverse (formerly Takaro Tech) successfully completed beta development of their interactive touch tiles for personalized remote rehabilitation treatment with patient performance monitoring, and clinical testing with ALYN patients are slated to begin during the coming months.
- Copli completed their proof of concept for a low-cost pediatric lower leg prosthetic and tested it for the first time with help from 2 ALYN patients. The company is now focused on raising funds to continue developing their beta product and to move toward production and distribution.
- For the first time, Voiceitt has installed their smarthome activation solution in a hospital environment. Residents of the Independent Living Neighborhood, who have dysarthric speech due to neuromuscular conditions, are learning to independently control connected devices in their rooms using the power of their voice.
- After successfully launching online sales of the NapUp on their website and on Amazon, Headovations is launching the HEADALOFT The company has also finished building a prototype of the HEADALOFT 360 system and completed initial usability testing with participants. Preparations for clinical trials at ALYN already underway!
- Recently awarded R&D grants include:
- QNIverse, to support the development of their personalization tool. Awarded by EzerTech, the assistive technology incentive program by the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA).
- Cognishine, to support the development of personalization functionality of their cognitive therapy platform. Awarded by EzerTech from the IIA.
- QNIverse, to support bi-national R&D of their authoring tool, in collaboration with NeMO Labs in Milan, Italy. Awarded by the Israel-Italy Joint Innovation Program on behalf of the Israeli and Italian innovation authorities to promote bi-lateral partnerships.
2021 Event Highlights
Events in 2021 benefitted from the flexibility granted by remote and hybrid formats developed in 2020, as well as a return to classic in-person meetings and conferences. Here are just a few of the amazing events we participated in this year:
- March 2021 - ALYNnovation was invited to present our partnership model at the 2021 Child Health Technology Conference, organized by the NIHR CYP MedTech, a UK-based cooperative focused on medtech for children and young people supported by the NHS. The seminar, delivered by Arie Melamed and Tamar Weiss, discussed “ALYNnovation as a novel model of ‘open innovation’: Blending multiple stakeholder design partnerships to create effective rehabilitation solutions.” We are always happy for the opportunity to share our successes with others to encourage more development of pediatric assistive technologies and collaboration around the world!
- June 2021 – In partnership with the 8200 Alumni Association and the Bank Hapoalim Center for Social Banking, ALYN Hospital was hosted at the national headquarters of Bank Hapoalim for an evening of learning about user-centric design and networking for assistive technology entrepreneurs. Excellent expert lectures were given by Tamar Weiss, internationally renowned researcher and lecturer of rehabilitation technologies at Haifa University and senior research consultant at ALYN Hospital, and Yaron Galitzky, VP of Surface Devices & Accessories at Microsoft and the driving force behind Microsoft’s accessible accessories. This meaningful event was our first fully in-person meetup since the beginning of COVID and was a wonderful way to return to face-to-face networking with startups and institutions in the ecosystem.
September 2021 – The ALYN Hospital Innovation Space was proud to host the UAE-Israel Business Council (UIBC) for a hybrid bi-national discussion panel on the cross-section between assistive technology and employment of People of Determination, the Emirati term of respect referring to people living with disabilities. The panel was moderated by Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem and Co-Founder & President of the UIBC, with powerful introductory words from Justice Richard Bernstein, the first blind Supreme Court Justice in the US. Distinguished speakers included Ahmed Obaid AlMansoori, Founder of the Strategists Center and Al Mansoori Consultancy & Crossroads of Civilizations Museums, and Majid Al Usaimi, President of the Asian Paralympic Committee and CEO of the Dubai Club for People of Determination. Looking forward to participating in the next inspiring meetup!
- December 2021 – At HealthIL 2021, the largest in-person healthcare innovation event in Israel, ALYN Hospital hosted the first-ever rehabilitation zone on the expo floor that proudly included a few of ALYNnovation’s partners: Cognishine, QNIverse, and Headovations. On stage, ALYNnovation General Manager Arie Melamed spoke about our success with our innovation model, using one of our startup partners as a use case. In addition to meeting many interesting startups and industry players, the rehabilitation zone was visited by MK Nitzan Horowitz, Israel’s Minister of Health.
