Improving healthcare across borders with data and clinical research

Charité intensifies cooperation with Israeli Clalit Health Services

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Berlin, 02.07.2024

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Israel has shown how the collection of patient data can advance research into the prevention of infections and the development of therapies. Since then, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Israel’s largest healthcare organisation have been cooperating with the aim of combining Israeli expertise in the use of big data with innovative biomedical research approaches by Charité scientists. As part of this collaboration, one of the first joint projects has now received EU funding.

Charité and Clalit Health Services have been working together in a strategic scientific partnership since 2022. “At first glance, Charité, one of the largest university hospitals in Europe, and Clalit, a health management organisation, are very different. However, this is precisely what makes this partnership so attractive and offers so much potential,” explains Prof Heyo K. Kroemer, Chairman of the Charité Executive Board. He adds: “Clalit’s particular strength lies in its outstanding digital infrastructure and its ability to put innovations such as AI-driven care platforms into practice on a large scale.” Clalit Health Services is Israel’s largest public healthcare organisation and operates a network of 14 hospitals and more than 1,300 primary care clinics, pharmacies and dental clinics, serving around five million members. With its innovation hub Clalit Innovation, it promotes research and development.

The scientific collaboration was initiated at an initial workshop in 2022 by Charité scientists Prof. Friedemann Paul, Head of the Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC), and Prof. Leif Erik Sander, Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Intensive Care Medicine. At this meeting, ten German-Israeli tandems of interdisciplinary research groups were formed in the fields of AI and health data, immunology and infectiology as well as oncology and cardiology. A second follow-up meeting was held at Charité in June of this year: Israeli and Berlin scientists presented results and plans for ongoing joint projects in more than 40 presentations and formed new project groups in the fields of women’s health and mental health in workshops. Prof Joachim Spranger, Dean of Charité, expressed his delight at the opening of the event: “The collaboration with Clalit offers unique opportunities to improve data analysis and AI solutions. The processing and utilisation of such high-quality health data makes it possible to better predict disease progression and treatment outcomes, identify previously unknown disease patterns and ultimately offer patients suitable diagnostic and therapeutic measures at an early stage.

EU funds German-Israeli research project

The EXPLORE-NB project by PD Dr Hedwig Deubzer, Senior Physician at Charité’s Department of Paediatrics with a focus on oncology and haematology, which was recently accepted by the European Union in the HORIZON 2020 ERA-NET programme and received funding of around 939,000 euros, is an example of future-oriented collaboration. Together with her Israeli colleagues Dr Esther Berko, Dr Assaf Grunwald and Dr Nurit Gal Mark and other European partners, she will be working intensively over the next three years on the question of whether molecular markers of solid tumours in children, such as neuroblastoma, can also be identified in so-called biofluids and thus less invasively. Biofluids include blood and bone marrow, Urine and cerebrospinal fluid. Liquid biopsies are minimally to non-invasive, low-risk and can therefore be performed serially. Dr Deubzer emphasises: “Our hypothesis is that we can monitor the response to therapy with liquid biopsies and detect and understand the development of resistance to therapy at an early stage. In EXPLORE-NB, we will be focussing on epigenetic changes. Our cooperation is based on the research goal of increasing the chances of recovery and improving health monitoring after paediatric cancer. Together, we would therefore like to examine the significance of the EXPLORE-NB research data in a clinical trial in the future.”

Close cooperation despite challenges

Just how close the cooperation is after two years, despite the pandemic and war in the Middle East, is also demonstrated by the Visiting Fellowship for Prof Ran Balicer funded by Stiftung Charité. The Israeli physician and public health expert will set up a working group at Charité over the next three years as part of the fellowship programme and continue to promote cooperation between the two institutions. “We believe that this ongoing collaboration between Charité and Clalit is of the highest scientific calibre and potentially clinically effective. The opportunity for high calibre clinicians and researchers on both sides to leverage Clalit’s unparalleled data resources has a powerful synergistic effect, enabling ground-breaking research across multiple scientific disciplines,” says Prof Ran Balicer, Chief Innovation Officer of Clalit, adding: “We are delighted to begin a new series of collaborations this week and are confident that they will further enhance the positive impact of this research on the lives and wellbeing of patients – in Germany, in Israel and globally.”

About Clalit Health Services

Clalit is part of Israel’s integrated healthcare system, of which around 52 per cent of the approximately 10 million inhabitants are members. It is a non-profit organisation that integrates primary, specialist and hospital care. With 14 hospitals, Clalit provides around 30 per cent of inpatient beds in Israel. Of the 48,000 employees, 11,000 are doctors and 15,000 are nurses. The annual budget amounts to 13.5 billion dollars.

Picture: Scientists from Charité and Clalit at the CharitéCrossOver in June 2024 © Charité | Oliver Fischer