Israel Leads World In Medical Device Patents

"Israel Leads World In Medical Device Patents: A Cardio-Vascular SuperPower" (February 2005, Vol 5(10) BioIsrael.com)

Leading text: "Israel leads the world in patents for medical devices on a per capita basis according to data presented at the inaugural session of ILSI, Israel Life Science Industry, a new umbrella organization. Ruti Alon, one of ILSI's founders, pointed out that one of the reasons for founding the organization was to be able to gather accurate date that could be used to present a clear picture of the industry's assets. Her findings corroborate the notion that Israel is a leading player in the world life science arena, especially in the cardio-vascular area.

Among some of ILSI's findings: Israel has 466 life science companies, with 80 percent of them founded in the last ten years. Since 2000 about 50 companies have been founded each year. The industry remains in its formative stage with about thirty percent of the companies in the seed stage and only 20 percent in the clinical stage. The biggest area of industry focus is cardio-vascular with 67 companies active in this area. More than half of the industry is comprised of medical device companies (54 percent) biotech companies make up 21 percent. About a half of the medical device companies focus on therapeutic devices with the leading applications being in cardiovascular, oncology, neurology and neurodegenerative...."[FullText]