Sheba Medical Center, ranked by Newsweek as one of the top ten hospitals in the world, is redefining healthcare through its innovative use of artificial intelligence (AI). Under the leadership of Prof. Yitshak Kreiss, Direcꦗtor General, and Prof. Eyal Zimlichman, Chief Transformation Officer and Chief AI Officer, Sheba is pioneering a global vision to integrate AI into every aspect of hospital operations. This vision is anchored in Sheba’s ARC (Accelerate, Redesign, Collaborate) innovation ecosystem, which serves as a platform for transforming healthcare delivery locally and globally.

WebPro News sat dow🐬n with Prof Eyal Zimlichman to learn more:

How do these multiple AI initiatives fit into ARC and Sheba’s long-term vision, and what does this say about the role AI will play in the future of hospital care?

Sheba’s AI initiatives are integral to its ARC transformation roadmap, which is establishing the hospita♒l as a global leader in AI-driven healthcare transformation. ARC’s vision emphasizes that AI is not merely a technological tool but a strategic enabler that will fundamentally reshape healthcare delivery. AI has the transformative potential to redesign professional disciplines and decision-making processes within hospitals.

By embedding AI into clinical workflows, operational processes, administrative systems, and financial management, Sheba is creating a model for precision medicine that improves patient outcomes while enhancing caregiver efficiency. AI is positioned as a foundational element in Sh🎉eba’s mission to deliver predictive care, empower patients with personalized treatments, and ensure sustainability across all levels of operation.

What type of projects will the AI Center work on?

Under the leadership of Dr. Ayelet Akselrod-Ballin, newly appointed Head and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the AI Center, the center will focus on transforming healthcare through multidisciplinary task f🍬orces. 🐽These task forces are organized around key domains such as clinical decision support, diagnostics, operational efficiency, safety and risk management, and patient experiences.

The methodology involves identifying unmet needs within each domain, prioritizing projects based on impact and feasibility, and providing expert opinions on proposed solutions. The AI Center spans all areas of Sheba’s campus operations, ensuring that every aspect of healthcare delivery benefits from advanced AI technologies. This comprehensive approach is enabling us to develop scalable soꦜlutions that can be adapted to other hospitals worldwide.

What role do ARC’s startups and external partnerships play in developing and integrating AI solutions within the hospital, and how will this be expanded to other hospitals and regions?

Startups like Aidoc (radiology), MDClone (data analytics), TytoCare (remote diagnostics), and Nucleai (precision pathology) are central to ARC’s in꧅novation strategy. These colla🔯borations enable rapid prototyping, validation, and deployment of cutting-edge solutions in real-world clinical settings at Sheba.

ARC’s global ecosystem—comprising over 160 members in over a dozen countries—serves as a strategic asset for co-developing solutions and sharing best practices. The model is expanding internationally through regional AR🌟C centers (e.g., ARC Ottawa in Canada), dedicated venture funds like embARC Ventures for healthcare startups, and strategic partnerships with industry leaders such as Microsoft, Roche, and Merck.

By standardizing frameworks for AI implementation (e.g., we developed an internal system called the ARC AI Maturity Score), these innovations can be adapted to diverse healthcare syst🌸ems globally while maintaining Sheba’s commitment to ethical standards.

What challenges come with integrating AI at this scale?

Integratin๊g AI into healthcare at scale presents several 🀅challenges:

1. Data Quality and Interoperability: Ensuring access to high-quality data across fragmented systems remains a significant hurdle. Sheba addresses this through robust data infrastructure led by its Chief Data Officer.
2. Ethical Concerns: Managing bias in algorithms while maintaining transparency in decision-making is critical for building trust among patients and clinicians. Therefore, we’ve developed initiatives like Explainable AI which are central to Sheba’s approach.
3. Regulatory Compliance: Navigating complex regulations such as the EU AI Act requires governance frameworks that align with international standards.
4. Cultural Resistance: Overcoming skepticism among healthcare professionals demands targeted training programs like those offered by the Sheba AI Academy.
5. Infrastructure Needs: Building IT systems capable of supporting large-scale AI deployments across multiple domains requires significant investment in hardware and software capabilities.
6. Human-Centered Design: Ensuring that AI solutions are user-friendly and seamlessly integrated into existing workflows is essential for adoption.

Sheba addresses these challenges through governance structures, which I lead as the Chief AI Officer, iterative implementation processes guided by human-centered design principles, and foste🧔ring cultural🌠 change through education programs, led by Dr. Gal Goshen, the Chief Medical Officer of our new AI center.

Can you explain more on Project K and its goals?

Project K, our AI-powered emergency department, streamlines the patient admission process by autom✃atically gathering and organizing health records, minimizing administrative forms, and enhancing the precision of medical assessments. The system can recommend appropriate🍸 tests based on patient data, create comprehensive summaries, and assist doctors in prioritizing urgent cases.

While the Project K initiative is still in its early stages of implementation, it represents a fundamental shift in emergency department operations. The system enables medical team💧s to manage multiple patients more efficiently, w✤ith the goal of providing faster and more effective emergency care. As this represents a recent initiative, we are actively collecting data on its impact and will be publishing more comprehensive metrics as the program matures.

The Sheba AI Academy is training every hospital employee to be AI-enabled. In practical terms, what does this mean for the daily work of doctors and nurses?

The Sheba AI Academy, power🧜ed by ARC, is promoting cultural change across Sheba’s campus by fostering deep understanding of how AI can augment daily tasks while empowering professionals to focus on complex decision-making and patient interac✤tion.

The academy provides comprehensive training through online courses, interactive workshops, and hands-on experience to equip our entire workforce with practical AI expertise. By the end of 2025, we aim to train 100% of Sheba’s medical professionals in AI fundamentals.

For doctors and nurses, this training transforms daily wor♋k in severa🗹l concrete ways:

1. Enhanced clinical decision-making: Healthcare professionals learn to leverage AI tools that analyze patient data and suggest potential diagnoses or treatment options.
2. Streamlined administrative tasks: We can differentiate between patient- and provider-facing AI, with the latter easier to integrate, therefore already expanding significantly to reduce workloads across health systems by automating tasks like data entry and transcriptions, reviewing EHRs and files to extract relevant patient data. This allows clinicians to focus more on direct patient care rather than paperwork.
3. Advanced diagnostic capabilities: Clinicians are trained to work with AI systems that can identify patterns in medical images or patient data that might be missed by human observation alone.
4. Operational efficiency: Staff learn to use AI tools that optimize scheduling, resource allocation, and patient flow throughout the hospital.

While AI will significantly change how healthcare professionals work, it’s designed to augment human capabilities rather than replace them—enabling our staff to practice at the top of their license with more time for patient interaction.

How do you see AI evolving in the next decade—how different will the patient experience be in 2030 or 2035?

ꦿLooking toward 2030 – 2035, patients can expect a highly personalized healthcare experience driv🃏en by predictive analytics and generative AI models:

• Proactive Care: Early detection of diseases through wearable devices and ambient sensors integrated with hospital systems will enable interventions before symptoms appear.
• Precision Medicine: Treatments tailored to genetic profiles will replace standardized approaches with individualized care plans.
• Seamless Interaction: Virtual assistants providing real-time health advice via conversational interfaces will make navigating healthcare systems effortless for patients.
• Enhanced Accessibility: Remote diagnostics platforms like Sheba Beyond will expand access to quality care regardless of geographic location or resource constraints.
• Integrated Care Journeys: Coordinated care across different specialists will create more coherent treatment experiences with fewer gaps or redundancies.

Prof. Kreiss envisions hospitals transitioning from reactive care centers into 💙proactive hubs focused on prevention and personalization—ensuring better outcomes for patients worldwide while setting new benchmarks for excel🐼lence in medicine.

Sheba Medical Center’s commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technology positions🦩 it as a global leader in🔯 transforming healthcare through artificial intelligence—ensuring better outcomes for patients worldwide while setting new standards for innovation in medicine.