The rapid blood infusers have received rave reviews from Israeli hospital staff, who have been using them to save lives as the war against Hamas continues.
By Etgar Lefkovits, JNS
An Israel-born Harvard University business professor who founded a medical technology company in Massachusetts nearly half a century ago has donated 50 life-saving medical devices designed to replace blood lost during hemorrhaging to Israeli hospitals in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre.
The medical systems, which are used in almost all emergency rooms and trauma centers in the U.S., were donated to about 20 Israeli hospitals and trauma centers nationwide that went on emergency war footing last fall in the wake of the worst single-day attack against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
“We should do all we can to save the wounded men and women who are defending Israel,” Belmont Medical Technologies founder Regina Herzlinger said in a statement to JNS.
The rapid blood infuser device, whose hospital list price is $35,000-$40,000, instantly warms blood lost due to an injury, accident or transplant to 37 degrees Celsius, eliminates any air bubbles so there is not risk of an air embolism, and infuses up to a liter of blood per minute.
Blood is usually stored in hospital refrigerators at 5 degrees Celsius.
The adult body typically holds 5 liters of blood, so in theory the entire blood supply can be replaced in 5 minutes using the device.
The rapid blood infusers have received rave reviews from Israeli hospital staff who have been using them to save lives as the war against Hamas continues.
The rapid blood infuser device. Credit: Courtesy.
“Many [lives] were saved both in the trauma room, in the operating room and in intensive care thanks to the system,” said Professor Moti Klein, head of the Trauma Unit at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva.
He called the blood infusers “simple to operate, reliable and life-saving.”
“It’s great to hear how much the equipment contributed and is contributing to saving lives,” said Moshe Sade, CEO of Clalit Medical Engineering, which partnered in the implementation of the project in Israel.
Herzlinger, an entrepreneur and academic who teaches at the Harvard Business School, was born in Tel Aviv to parents who fled Nazi Germany for the pre-state Land of Israel before emigrating to the United States when she was a child.
In addition to her academic teaching and business, she has advised the United States Congress and President George W. Bush on healthcare policy, and served on the Scientific Advisory Group of the United States Air Force.