The Technion’s story has been intertwined with Israel’s for more than a century, from laying the foundations for a new nation to shaping its future.
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In a 1966 Hollywood film “Fantastic Voyage”, screenplay by Isaac Asimov, scientists are shrunk to a few millimeters and injected into the bloodstream of a dying scientist who has vital information. Their mission: Navigate to his brain and destroy a blood clot before returning to normal size.
Fast forward: On sabbatical in Boston in the early 1980s, Rafael rocket engineer Gabriel Iddan encounters Israeli gastroenterologist, Eitan Scapa. “I can’t reach the small intestine with my endoscope,” he says. Jokingly, to Iddan: “Can you shrink a camera and transmitter small enough to swallow and travel through the intestines?”
Iddan’s Israeli startup Given Imaging took 20 years to gain FDA approval, create its own Fantastic Voyage, and succeed. Its Pillcam, the size of an Omega 3 pill, is swallowed, journeys through the lower intestine, films and transmits what it sees to a nearby screen, and thus enables doctors to see inside the bowel and detect illness. Some four million people have used it, saving countless lives.
Technion alumnus Gabriel Iddan developed the Pillcam, the pill-sized camera that transformed GI diagnostics.