Sheba Medical Center First Outside US to Adopt OpenAI Healthcare AI Models

Sheba Medical Center, through its ARC innovation arm, has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with OpenAI that will give Israeli medical teams access to the artificial intelligence giant’s dedicated healthcare models. The agreement makes Sheba the first hospital outside the United States to use OpenAI’s suite of specialized medical models. The agreement was signed by OpenAI’s head of health, and a Sheba delegation is expected to visit the company’s headquarters in August for meetings with senior executives.

The agreement covers OpenAI for Healthcare and ChatGPT Health, which were launched in January and are currently available at only a small number of U.S. hospitals. The system is designed for physicians and is intended to support clinical decision-making and the development of patient treatment plans based on the existing body of medical research. It is an encrypted and secure platform built specifically for hospitals. Each response will include citations, journal references and publication dates, allowing medical teams to independently verify the research underlying each recommendation.

The partnership will give Sheba physicians early access to advanced AI models before they are released more broadly and will deepen the hospital’s research partnership with OpenAI as part of the company’s healthcare program. Dedicated working groups at Sheba will be exposed to different stages of the models’ development, participate in OpenAI’s global events and develop internal applications tailored to working with the platform. Sheba’s treatment protocols will also be integrated into OpenAI’s models, enabling the system to tailor future recommendations to Israel’s healthcare system and the specific needs of Israeli patients. The tools will be integrated directly into the daily work of medical and research staff.

The project joins a series of AI systems already operating at Sheba that were developed through its innovation center, including technology developed by startup AIDOC to analyze medical imaging and rapidly detect cardiac events, as well as the SmartER emergency room platform, which automatically documents and summarizes clinical examinations. The ARC innovation center was established in 2019 by Sheba's Director General and Chief Innovation Officer to advance digital medical innovation at the hospital. The center allows entrepreneurs to test their technologies in a hospital environment, promotes strategic partnerships with medical institutions abroad and operates an investment arm in cooperation with the venture capital fund Triventures. "The healthcare system is one of the fields where artificial intelligence can have the greatest impact," OpenAI said in a statement. "We are excited to collaborate with Sheba to make advanced AI capabilities available to physicians, researchers, and healthcare professional teams."

In a separate development, Jerusalem’s first-ever joint academic body to promote research, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the capital’s “Innovation District Healthcare and High-Tech Revolution” has been officially named FourWard. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Shaare Zedek Medical Center (SZMC), Azrieli Jerusalem Academic College of Engineering and the Lev Academic Center (Jerusalem College of Technology), together with the Jerusalem Municipality and the Jerusalem Development Authority, are launching a platform for collaboration among academia, the healthcare system, industry and entrepreneurship, while promoting applied research, technology commercialization, the establishment of start-ups, the development of advanced human capital and the connection between researchers, entrepreneurs, investors and knowledge-intensive industries. It officially launched last week at HUJI’s Givat Ram campus, and the building where researchers will meet will eventually be erected near Road 16 and the Begin Highway.

A public company owned by the partnering institutions is being established to create this unprecedented platform for collaboration. Azrieli and Lev are each covering a sixth of the initial expenses, while the other two partners are each allocating a third. The effort, according to the president of Lev Academic Center, will have to prove itself in an increasingly competitive and uncertain global funding environment by producing world-class research, nurturing breakthrough technologies, and creating an innovation ecosystem compelling enough that partners and investors will want to be part of it. Examples of potential work include using joint databases to examine thousands of drugs taken by patients over years to determine whether they were protective or caused harm, and introducing tiny robots into the body to fix blocked coronary arteries instead of pushing in a catheter.

A delegation of nearly 40 US and international health executives also visited Israeli research institutions and startups, including the Weizmann Institute of Science, to examine how scientific discovery is translated into scalable medical technologies. The delegation was organized by Israel Tech Mission in collaboration with 8400 – The Health Network, Israel’s national HealthTech ecosystem accelerator. According to the mission’s executive director, “Israel’s advantage isn’t just density of talent—it’s velocity. But velocity needs channels. Delegations like this create structured pathways between founders, researchers, operators, and capital allocators. When those pathways are intentional, the distance between lab discovery and global patient impact shortens dramatically.” The founder of Exponential Medicine said, “The future of health and medicine is coming faster than you think. It’s not the technology; it’s often the convergence of a new operating system for the future of health and medicine.”