TIME Magazine has named Israeli water-tech company Lishtot Detection and Israeli medical intelligence company Aidoc to its 2018 Genius Companies list of businesses that are inventing the future.
The Kiryat Gat-based Lishtot (Hebrew for “to drink”) and the Tel Aviv-based Aidoc appear on the TIME list beside mega brands such as Amazon, Apple, Disney and Nike.
Lishtot developed and patented new sensor technology for detecting contamination (such as E. coli, lead, PFOA, arsenic, mercury, copper, chlorine, and protein) in water, based on a phenomenon associated with electrical fields.
Its first commercial product using this award-winning technology is TestDrop Pro – a reusable keychain device that can detect contamination in water in less than two seconds without touching the water.
Mass market shipping of TestDrop Pro ($49.95) began in July and is already being used by thousands of people all over the world, says CEO and cofounder Netanel Raisch.
The devices are manufactured in Israel by people with disabilities. Tests take two seconds and give a blue or red light indicating the presence or absence of contaminants.
The TestDrop Pro connects via Bluetooth to the dedicated Lishtot mobile app where users can track their test history, view more data on their water including a percentage likelihood of contamination, and distinguish between bottled water, tap water, and natural water from rivers and streams.
The next Lishtot product will be the TeStraw, a personal device to improve the taste of drinking water.
Aidoc brings artificial intelligence to radiology, saving lives by immediately analyzing scans before a patient has even left a CT machine. It flags critical conditions like bleeding in the brain. These scans are moved to the top of the pile to be inspected by a doctor.
“CTs and MRIs used to be rare, but now they’ve become much more common, and hospitals take more every year. The workload for radiologists has rocketed up, so it can sometimes take an hour or more before a doctor sees the result of a scan. In some cases, a CT will show a critical condition but nobody will see the picture until it’s too late,” says a company spokesman.
Aidoc is being used in 50 medical facilities around the world. It has FDA clearance and European CE certification, with more approvals on the way.
The company was founded in 2015 by Elad Walach, Michael Braginsky and Guy Reiner, who all served together in the elite military Talpiot program, where Walach was in charge of AI for the Israel Air Force.