Contemporary medicine's rapid advances in patient care owe much to the introduction of novel high-tech solutions invented by physician-scientists in answer to clinical dilemmas. The delivery of early stage innovative technologies to patients is expensive, however, and calls for a special effort by hospitals because initially, a new product will not be approved for reimbursement or will be only partially reimbursed -- in Israel's case, by kupat-holim (government health-fund) providers; any new therapeutic technology will require physicians, nurses and medical technicians to undergo specialized training; and in some cases (e.g., reimplantation of cardiac valves using catheter techniques, or the treatment of brain disease using sophisticated navigational technology), costly disposable parts are used.

Aims
Thus, in purely practical terms, hospitals that provide care for a wide cohort of patients cannot afford to introduce all the new lifesaving and life-enhancing technologies that creative medical and scientific minds can imagine. The proposed Novel Clinical-Therapeutics Fund aims to secure endowment or other donor funding to enable Rambam to acquire state-of-the-art medical devices and to train physicians, nurses and healthcare technicians in their use.

Technologies
Rambam anticipates introducing one important new therapeutic technology per year.  Examples of new devices high on our list of priorities for acquisition are percutaneous, stented cardiac valves that can be implanted via catheterization, obviating the need for surgery, and surgical robots that can be integrated with various medical procedures to enable highly complex, delicate and precise, minimally invasive operations.