Although the blog has been quiet the last couple of months, many exciting things have been happening.

In November, I had the opportunity to teach Law & Entrepreneurship to law students at the College of Law and Business in Ramat Gan, Israel. Through this course, I taught my students about the legal issues involved in guiding a technology start-up through its life cycle – from idea to an exit. Given the fact that Israel is known as "Start-up Nation" or the "Silicon Wadi," the students had great familiarity with start-ups in general and were enthusiastic and engaged in learning about the legal issues for these types of companies in the United States. The students were especially interested when I discussed Israeli companies that had success in Pittsburgh, such as dbMotion. Their final project was to prepare a client memorandum in English.  I was pleasantly surprised at both the level of analysis and application of the law, as well the level of writing, given that English was the second (or third) language of most students.  I hope to repeat this experience and further strengthen ties between the College of Law and Business and the University of Pittsburgh Law School.

In December, UPMC and Schnader sponsored a Pittsburgh visit by the Israeli Medical Device and Life Sciences Road Show at UPMC's Center for Connected Medicine. The Road Show featured six Israeli medical device and life sciences companies from Israel's incubator system.

  • Agam Biological has developed products based on jelly fish-derived collagens for a wide range of medical, nutritional and cosmetic applications.
  • Discover Medical Devices has developed a medical necessity sleep mask for patients that have both sleep apnea and heart failure.
  • Inovytec has developed a non-invasive life saving solution to increase survivability of patients suffering cardiac or respiratory emergencies in out of hospital environments.
  • Premia Spine has developed a motion implement intended to replace traditional spinal fusion surgery for patients with spinal stenosis other lower back maladies.
  • Bio GenCell is developing a technology platform for automated production of patient specific stem cell based therapies.
  • TenCure is developing revolutionary cancer therapies based on a newly described mechanism of action .

These companies presented their innovative technologies and products to a room full of local investors as well as visiting investors from Cincinnati and Cleveland. Local participants included the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, Innovation Works, Mutual Capital Partners Funds, Woodland Family Partners, FCC Capital, Blue Tree Allied Angel Investors, Draper Triangle Ventures, UPMC's Center for Innovation in Regenerative Medicine as well as representatives of local and state government.  We hope that this is the first of many of this type of events that will provide opportunities to link Israel and Pittsburgh on a business basis.  There is already talk of a future Healthcare IT Roadshow.  Stay tuned.

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