Lessons from Israel's "we can fix it" spirit

Throughout my nearly 40-year career as a cardiologist in Chicago's hospitals, I've always been driven by a single mantra: "We can fix it." No matter what condition or complication a patient is facing, my colleagues and I will use every resource at our disposal to save lives. It's a mantra -- and a philosophy -- that is inspired by my multiple trips to Israel, where I've met with medical professionals who are working tirelessly on cutting-edge innovations, and throughout my extensive experience practicing medicine in the United States.

In both places, the best and the brightest minds in the medical community are bringing this can-do ethos to bear in addressing the most pressing healthcare issues of our time.

Since 2009, I've led six delegations consisting of dozens of physicians from Chicago and across the U.S. to Israel, organized under the auspices of Development Corporation for Israel/Israel Bonds, to meet and learn from healthcare professionals and researchers driving the world's leading medical advancements. Our most recent delegation was just weeks before Israeli scientists unveiled the world's first 3D-printed heart, complete with blood vessels and chambers -- a truly incredible accomplishment that advances the possibilities for transplants. Through the years, we have also had the privilege of meeting with many true visionaries during regular delegations to Israel, such as Professor Lior Gepstein, who made the groundbreaking discovery that stem cells differentiate into beating heart cells, and Professor Avigdor Scherz, who first developed a technique of fighting cancer cells with photodynamics.

Three-dimensional-printed hearts weren't the only breakthroughs we experienced in Israel. One of the developments we saw during our delegation was by the Israeli technology firm OrCam, which has pioneered a new device that allows vision-impaired people to better recognize objects. OrCam's work embodies Israel's "we can fix it" spirit -- and it was just one of many such modernizations we were fortunate to see.

At Tel Aviv University, a world-renowned front-runner in medical marijuana research and development, we met with a team developing treatments for conditions ranging from epileptic seizures to Parkinson's disease. As Chicago and communities across the U.S. grapple with the opioid epidemic, those university researchers are charting a new way forward in pain management. Here again, we saw expert minds applying extraordinary ingenuity to some of today's most intractable medical conundrums, breaking through in new and exciting ways that show promise for the future.

As any physician knows, a children's hospital can be a sobering and lonely environment. I've walked through many pediatric wards in the U.S. where patients are isolated from one another, alone in their rooms. But at Alyn Specialized Children's Hospital in Jerusalem, we saw something different: young kids, many of them with serious conditions, and their families gathered in circles outside of their rooms, talking and supporting each other, finding their way forward together.

What's more, these families reflected the full diversity of the region: Israelis, Arabs, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, Druze, the religious, the secular, all forming one community. Here, the only thing that mattered was that their children needed care, and that they received it with compassion from the clinical staff, equal and undiscriminating.

During previous delegations, we have also visited Hala International Clinic for Diagnostic and Breast Health, a global leader in mammography. In the States, it's common protocol for women to have to wait several days to get a call back after a breast exam, with news that they have to return for further testing and more several-day waits. Not so at Hala International. There, doctors alert women of any issues in the same sitting as their exams, enabling them to catch and address problems sooner. Each of us on the medical delegation had decades of experience in dozens of U.S. hospitals, but we were all in awe of this. When we raised the issue of wait times and redundant back-and-forth travel in the U.S. with the doctors at Hala International, they simply told us, "We can fix it."

This mentality was evident everywhere we looked during our trip, and the results were nothing short of life-changing. There was no challenge too great to be met, no medical issue too complex to be solved through innovation. Through this Israel Bonds delegation, we had the opportunity to see up close and in person how Israel is achieving profound scientific discoveries and medical breakthroughs, enabling the world to become a better, healthier and safer place for all. My colleagues and I are proud to be deeply connected to Bonds as an organization and a means to secure the continuity of this ever-evolving nation.

Burton L. Herbstman, M.D., of Buffalo Grove, was co-chair of the Development Corporation for Israel/Israel Bonds 2019 Maimonides Medical Delegation to Israel along with Andrew M. Hutter, M.D., and serves on Bonds' National Board of Directors, in addition to serving as chair of Bonds' National Campaign Advisory Council for the Chicago/Midwest region.