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What does it take to keep hospitals in Jerusalem healing and innovating through war?
In this episode of Hadassah On Call: New Frontiers in Medicine, we sit down with Gidon Melmed, executive director of the Hadassah Offices in Israel, to go behind the scenes of Hadassah's work on the ground.
Melmed explains how his 26-person team serves as Hadassah's "eyes and ears" in Israel, coordinating hospital and other visits, vetting projects for philanthropic support and acting as a bridge between the Hadassah Medical Organization, Hadassah's youth villages and Hadassah's leadership and donors worldwide.
"You know, October 7 really changed everything," Melmed said, describing how Hadassah rushed to build an underground emergency hospital and the Gandel Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus, Jerusalem's only comprehensive rehabilitation center, during the first year of the war.
All this unfolded as more than 300 physicians and nurses served in combat and reserve units, staff coped with wounded and fallen family members, and patient volume rose to 1.2 million annually.
The episode also dives into some of Hadassah's most exciting frontiers in medicine: AI-driven cancer care using decades of patient data, a groundbreaking partnership with Roche to screen every cancer patient genetically, BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guérin) tuberculosis vaccine research that may reduce dementia risk, and Israel's first organoid bank, which allows scientists to test treatments on miniature patient-specific organs in the lab.
Melmed also highlights Hadassah's role as a testing site for Medtronic surgical robots and its early adoption of augmented reality to improve the precision and efficiency of operations.
According to Melmed, the future of medicine "is going to be a combination of working with AI, working with innovation [and] technology and maintaining humanity."
- The Media Line: Hadassah Helping Israelis Heal From PTSD
- Hadassah Medical Organization Grapples With Hundreds of Wounded and a Country With PTSD
- Hadassah Clinical Trial Tests Tuberculosis Vaccine to Prevent Alzheimer’s
- Hadassah’s Organoid Bio-Bank Promises Patients Personalized Medicine
Hadassah On Call: New Frontiers in Medicine is a production of Hadassah, The Women's Zionist Organization of America. Hadassah enhances the health of people around the world through medical education, care and research innovations at the Hadassah Medical Organization. For more information on the latest advances in medicine, please head over to hadassah.org.
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The show is hosted by Maayan Hoffman and produced by the team at the Hadassah offices in New York and Israel.
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Listen to our recent episode with Dr. Ofer Gofrit
If you are enjoying this episode, you’ll want to check out our previous episode with Dr. Ofer Gofrit, chair of the Urology Department at the Hadassah Medical Organization. He kicks off Season 7 with a straight-talking guide to men’s health that every family should hear.
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