In 1948, as Jewish pioneers fought for the State of Israel’s independence, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion tasked Dr Chaim Sheba with creating a military hospital to treat soldiers wounded on the battlefield. Dr  Sheba, who at the time commanded the fledgling Israel Defence Forces Medical Corps, decided to use the barracks from a former British military garrison (at Tel Hashomer in central Israel) as a makeshift medical facility.

Thus, Tel Hashomer Hospital, which became the Sheba Medical Centre after Professor Sheba died in 1971, was born out of purpose, ingenuity and innovation.

Today, Sheba treats 20 per cent of Israel’s population of nine million people, while also distinguishing itself as a pioneering force in global medicine. To this day, Sheba Medical Centre continues to fulfill its original purpose as the national centre for treatment and rehabilitation of Israeli soldiers, employing the most sophisticated technologies.

Sheba’s 200-acre size and scope are unprecedented, making it the largest medical centre in the entire Middle East region.

Beyond treating patients, Sheba provides a complete continuum of personalised care focused on prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. In 2018, the government of Israel tasked Professor Yitshak Kreiss, the director general of Sheba Medical Centre, with transforming the facility into Israel's first "City of Health", by harnessing the combined brainpower of its professional staff to cure dreaded diseases and using digitalised healthcare applications to keep patients away from the hospital.

The core of the City of Health's success will be Sheba's futuristic ARC Innovation Centre. As Sheba Medical Centre is already world-renowned as a scientific-medical research powerhouse, ARC (Accelerate, Redesign, Collaborate) is already creating a new medical paradigm that will have global impact.

By challenging the status quo and transforming the standard hospital ecosystem, ARC at Sheba is ushering in a new era of seamless integration between innovators, scientists, startups, high-level developers, large corporations, investors and academia – all to ultimately better serve its patients and develop breakthrough cures and treatments. Start-ups within the ARC Innovation Centre are already working on precision medicine, big data and predictive analytics, digital health/telemedicine and mobile health. Two start-ups who have been using various medical platforms at Sheba during the past year, have already been cited by Time magazine.

The global buzz surrounding exciting medical developments is attracting interest from physicians around the globe including in the UK.  Sheba Medical Centre also takes great pride in cultivating the next generation of Israel’s top physicians, including a collaboration with London's St George's Medical School in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Professor Arnon Afek, associate director and acting director of Sheba General Hospital at Sheba Medical Centre, Tel Hashomer who has played an integral role in the St George Medical School programme, enthusiastically supports the idea of bringing in doctors from the UK and beyond. "One of the main strengths of any successful company is diversity. Having doctors and researchers from Israel working alongside doctors and researchers from the UK, USA and other countries allows for a fascinating exchange of ideas and the creation of a multi-cultural environment and the basis for innovation," he says. "As we are one of the most innovative medical centres in the world, from both a clinical and research point of view, we have the best environment for intuitive minds. In theory and practice, we accentuate the essence of the start-up nation mentality. This is a dynamic and exciting place to work, especially for those medical professionals who wish to become a part of the future of medicine."