Author: Techtime

ScoutCam Appoints Yovav Sameah as the its new Chief Executive Officer

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ScoutCam announced the appointment of Mr. Yovav Sameah (above) as the Company’s new Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Sameah will replace Dr. Yaron Silberman, who will step down to pursue new opportunities. ScoutCam has developed the world’s smallest cameras based on micro visualization technologies. Today it provides video camera down to, 1mm Outer Diameter, Focal Distance of down to 2mm, with wireless option or wired option of up to 30m distance.

Most recently Yovav Sameah served as CEO of Frontline PCB Solutions, a non-public worldwide provider of Pre-Production and Industry 4.0 SW solutions in the PCB industry, presently owned by KLA-Tencor Corp. Prior to Frontline PCB Solutions, he served as Corporate Vice President and Chief Products Officer at Orbotech.

Prof. Benad Goldwasser, the Executive Chairman of the Board’ said that ScoutCam is now ripe to graduate from its status as an R&D phase company. “We will look to Mr. Sameah to navigate us forward as we transition to a fully-commercialized international company with sales and customers across various industries.”

ScoutCam's miniature Camera
ScoutCam’s miniature Camera

In February 2021, ScoutCam appointed Professor Jacob Bortman as director of its business development in the field of Industry 4.0. Prof. Bortman most recently held the post of Israeli Air Force’s Head of Material Directorate, where he oversaw the maintenance of all IAF aircraft, and prior to that served as both its Head of the Aircraft Department and Head of the UAV and Space Department. Following his retirement from the IAF, he transitioned to academia where he now teaches and researches as a professor of mechanical engineering at Ben-Gurion University in Israel.

COVID-19 triggers multi-million euro in contracts for Polytex

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Israeli workwear management company Polytex Technologies has witnessed explosive growth in the Spanish and French markets over the past year with multi-million euros in new contracts. The trend is continuing in both markets. Seven new hospitals throughout France and additional hospitals in Spain will be installing for the first time or expanding their use of Polytex’s solution that provides improved protection for health workers, which has become even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the technology leads to a significant operation efficiency with reduction in inventory levels and therefore lower expenses on uniforms.

Spain is currently the third largest market for Polytex outside Israel and France the fifth. The pandemic triggered a 90% increase in sales in Spain and a similar increase in France.

Two significant projects for Polytex were recently closed in Spain. One is the the extension of Polytex’s project with the Bellvitge University Hospital, near Barcelona, ​​and the second is a new project for the Servicio Navarro de Salud (SNS), which will equip the operating rooms of the Navarra Hospital, the Virgen del Camino Hospital, and the Reina Sofia Hospital with systems for the management of pajamas and clogs.

Polytex entered the Spanish market in 2007 and Spain has already become the company’s third country of reference in volume beyond the borders of Israel, only surpassed by the United States and Germany. More than 200 systems have been installed to serve more than 50 clients distributed throughout the country. The pandemic has led to a strong increase in sales, of which 40% comes from existing customers, who needed to increase their capacity to meet the increase in clothing consumption, and the remaining 60% were new customers, who quickly adapted Polytex’s service in order to increase hygiene and lower operating costs.

The French market has witnessed phenomenal growth as well. Over the past twelve months, Polytex has won contracts at major French hospitals in Rouen, Rennes, Pithiviers, Dax, Poissy, Ajaccio and at a large hospital laundry service in the Paris region. This is in addition to the eight hospitals and a pharmaceutical industrial site in various parts of the country, which have already installed Polytex’s workwear and scrubs management solution.

Hospital managers in both countries report that the Polytex system helps to simplify the distribution of workwear and led to a 40% on average reduction in expenses on uniforms and laundry. The actual volume of workwear needed was reduced substantially as was the amount of storage space required.

The Polytex solution is fully automated and enables hands-free dispensing and collecting of individual uniforms. The system itself is sealed, keeping garments in a clean environment that is opened only by laundry professionals during collection and restocking. The system is available on a 24/7 basis and often installed at multiple locations enabling staff to receive and return garments in seconds, thereby avoiding unnecessary crowding.

Refilling the machines with fresh clothing is very quick and takes only a couple of minutes.

The units can also be moved to special temporary wards dedicated to infectious diseases like COVID-19. The Polytex automated system is backed by a centralized cloud-based management and monitoring applications for end-to-end tracking.

“In the past year we have nearly doubled our sales in both Spain and France as the global pandemic has made hygiene an even more critical issue for hospitals,” said Yariv Matzliach, CEO of Polytex. He added that “both countries are currently among our largest and most strategic markets in Europe with tremendous growth potential in the coming years.”

Established in 2003, Polytex Technologies is a leading provider of workwear management solutions. Polytex supports the entire workwear laundry lifecycle with a wide range of automated machines backed by centralized cloud management and monitoring applications. Our solutions are used by hospitals and healthcare institutes, manufacturing sites, hospitality, and fitness centers. Polytex has over two decades of field-proven industry experience in the delivery of large-scale commercial laundry services. Polytex has over 3,000 installed machines located in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.

Polytex was established in Israel by the Poliner family. The co-founder Tomer Poliner served as the company’s CEO until Polytex received a major investment from the private equity fund Fortissimo Capital in 2019. He now leads the company’s technological and business development activities.

SuperCom Reports Succesful Coronavirus Quarantine Compliance Pilot in Israel

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Tel-Aviv based SuperCom (NASDAQ: SPCB), a global provider of secured solutions for the e-Government, IoT and Cybersecurity sectors, announced today that the pilot in Israel for its Coronavirus (COVID-19) citizen quarantine compliance technology has been successful. The pilot is comprised of proprietary products in SuperCom’s PureHealth technology suite to include the PureCare smartphone and PureTag bracelet, which will help persons comply with their quarantine requirements. This solution is designed to assist government efforts in combating the spread of the virus through proven location tracking and stay-at-home compliance rules being implemented around the globe.

The pilot, which offered travelers arriving at Israel’s International airport to go on home quarantine for 10-14 days with the Purecare technology and program, received high demand with over 91% choosing to opt in for the program. Travelers on the program reported, through interviews on Israeli public news channels, very positive and comfortable experiences with a high rate of satisfaction for choosing the program.

Accordingly, the ministry of health in Israel expressed immediate demand for a high quantity of bracelet based covid-19 quarantine solution units to assist them in opening up the Israel international airports for large amount of passengers daily. In light of this demand and a surge in interest from multiple other nations, Supercom has significantly increased its potential production capacity to over 20,000 units per month, highest among its industry peers. The currently discussed covid-19 compliance program in Israel is full service, which means the technology itself and full services including installation, training for users, support, monitoring, and reporting.

In various full-service programs in the United States , the company typically charges above $10 per day per unit, or an annuilized run rate of above $3650 per unit. Although pricing in this program could be different.

“We are very pleased with this pilot, utilizing our proprietary technology with persons under home-quartantine in Israel, and we are proud to help Israel validate an important strategy to help mitigate the spread of the coronavirus,” commented Ordan Trabelsi, President and CEO of SuperCom.

“As new coronavirus mutations continue to spread, governments and healthcare agencies continue searching for tools that assist their efforts in fighting this pandemic. After testing different variations of our technology and program structures, we believe we may have achieved a comprehensive solution for comfortable and effective quarantine compliance. We have increased our production capacity to allow rapid deployment of thousands of units, and invite more nations around the world to pilot our technology and solution as well, ” concluded Ordan Trabelsi, President and CEO of SuperCom.

PureHealth is a non-intrusive patient friendly suite that can constantly track patient location for compliance programs; within buildings, vehicles and outside.  PureHealth works within existing healthcare containment models for control and surveillance of patients with infectious disease. The solution can operate with a mobile phone standalone or with additional security and location accessories as needed. In addition to the PureCare smartphone and PureTag bracelet, SuperCom offers a web based SAAS command and control center to manage the field based devices and compliance with program defined rules. This best-of-breed system includes a comprehensive set of innovative features, including smart phone integration, secure communication, advanced AI and security, anti-tamper mechanisms, fingerprint biometrics, voice communication and extended battery life.

50,000 dominican women will be screened for cervical cancer using MobileODT AI-based technology

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According to GlobalCan data, cervical cancer is the fifth most common type of cancer among the general population in the Dominican Republic, and the second most common among women. In 2020, about 1,074 cases of cervical cancer were diagnosed. With a high cervical cancer rate among the Dominican Republic women population, early prevention can make a huge impact, saving lives and changing the outcomes for so many women. Furthermore, it can help the government save significant funds that would have been otherwise directed to the treatment.

A Mobile Colposcopy Using Smartphones

MobileODT, which was established in 2012 and is now run by the CEO Leon Boston, developed an inexpensive and mobile kit called EVA System, which is based on the smartphone’s photography and processing abilities and allows it to perform the vaginal colposcopy. The kit includes a zoom lense that is attached to the smartphone camera and a powerful lighting unit that allows clear imaging of the cervix. After the test, the images can be sent to gynecologists and experts through the application for diagnosis. In addition, the product also includes a smart decoding of the test, based on algorithms developed using machine learning performed on large databases of patient’s cervical imaging.

This assessment allows nurses, midwives and therapists to simply perform the diagnostic test even in remote locations and countries in which medical infrastructure is lacking, and thus help lessen the cervical cancer mortality rates. The EVA System kit which received FDA approval in 2016, is sold today in about 30 countries and is in use in 60 clinics in the US.

Leopard launched a smart camera empowered by Hailo’s AI chip

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Hailo’s AI processor has been integrated into a new product launched recently by Leopard; a manufacturer of embedded cameras for smart devices. The product, named EdgeTuring, is an embedded HD camera for image processing and video analytics applications, in which deep learning inference tasks like object detection and classification are performed at the end device rather than at the cloud. The camera is equipped with the Hailo-8 AI acceleration module, the SC2000 signal processor by Socionext, a japanese provider of advanced SoC, and it is also connected by a simple network connection to Amazon AWS cloud services.

The product is designed for a wide range of applications such as robotics and industrial automation, smart security cameras, machine vision applications in the retail sector and more. According to Leopard, the EdgeTuring consumes less power, performs at a higher level, and ensures greater reliability for video analytics and privacy at the edge than alternative solutions.. The camera is currently priced at $ 900.

Faster then Google and Intel

Founded in 2008 and based in California, Leopard develops embedded HD cameras for autonomous driving systems, drones and robotics, AR/VR and scientific and medical equipment. Among its customers are Nvidia, Xilinx, Qualcomm, On-Semi, Boston Robotics and Sony.

Launched just last year, the Hailo-8 enables customers to integrate high performance AI capabilities of 26 Tera Operations Per Second (TOPS) into edge devices. Hailo reported that a comparison between the Hailo-8 average Frames Per Second (FPS) with competitors across multiple standard NN benchmarks shows that Hailo’s AI modules achieve a FPS rate 26x higher than Intel’s Myriad-X modules and 13x higher than Google’s Edge TPU modules. The Hailo-8 M.2 module is already integrated into the next generation of Foxconn’s BOXiedge with no redesign required for the PCB.

Synopsys Delivers New ZeBu Empower Emulation System for Hardware-Software Power Verification

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Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) announced the immediate availability of ZeBu® Empower emulation system, delivering breakthrough technology for fast hardware-software power verification of multi-billion gate SoC designs. The performance of ZeBu Empower enables multiple iterations per day with actionable power profiling in the context of the full design and its software workload. With ZeBu Empower, software and hardware designers can utilize the power profiles to identify substantial power improvement opportunities for dynamic and leakage power much earlier. The ZeBu Empower emulation system also feeds forward power-critical blocks and time windows into Synopsys’ PrimePower engine to accelerate RTL power analysis and gate-level power sign-off.

Traditionally, power analysis with realistic software workloads is performed post-silicon, introducing a high amount of risk to miss critical high-power situations, which exposes companies to significant cost and product adoption risk. By taking advantage of high-speed emulation in ZeBu Empower, design teams can perform verification earlier in the design cycle, dramatically reducing risks of power bugs and missed SoC power goals.

“The industry’s need to shift-left software development from post-silicon to pre-silicon has driven tremendous adoption of our ZeBu Server over the last five years,” said Manoj Gandhi, general manager of the Verification Group at Synopsys. “Our breakthrough technology in ZeBu Empower addressees our customers’ need for hardware-software power verification enabling them to develop a new generation of power optimized SoCs.”

“As high-performance designs and workloads continue to grow in complexity, achieving leadership performance within a thermal envelope is important for our products,” said Alex Starr, Corporate Fellow, Technology and Engineering at AMD. “Solutions that allow us to efficiently profile power consumption across real workloads in a pre-silicon environment help us achieve our product goals. Synopsys’ ZeBu Empower, operating in collaboration with servers using 2nd Gen AMD EPYCTM processors, has enabled us to perform pre-silicon power analysis more efficiently in a quicker time.”

The Synopsys ZeBu Empower emulation system for hardware-software power verification solution is available now.

Synopsys offers a comprehensive solution for low power design and verification, including RTL-based early power exploration to the industry’s golden power signoff; from early static verification to emulation-based hardware-software power verification. Synopsys’ innovative low power solutions are deployed across some of the most demanding designs, globally.

French hospitals adopt Polytex’s technology to combat contamination

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Israeli Workwear management company Polytex Technologies has witnessed explosive growth in the French market over the past year. Seven new hospitals throughout the country have purchased the company’s fully automated workwear management solution that provides improved protection for health workers, which has become even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic and leads to significant reduction in the expenses on uniforms

Over the past twelve months, Polytex has won contracts at major French hospitals in Rouen, Rennes, Pithiviers, Dax, Poissy, Ajaccio and at a large hospital laundry service in the Paris region. This is in addition to the eight hospitals and a pharmaceutical industrial site in various parts of the country, which have already installed Polytex’s workwear and scrubs management solution.

The Polytex solution is fully automated and enables hands-free dispensing and collecting of individual uniforms. The system itself is sealed, keeping garments in a clean environment that is opened only by laundry professionals during collection and restocking. The system is available on a 24/7 basis and often installed at multiple locations enabling staff to receive and return garments in seconds, thereby avoiding unnecessary crowding.

Refilling the machines with fresh clothing is very quick and takes only a couple of minutes.

The units can also be moved to special temporary wards dedicated to infectious diseases like COVID-19. The Polytex automated system is backed by a centralized cloud-based management and monitoring applications for end-to-end tracking.

There are currently over 3,000 Polytex units operating in 20 countries, including the U.S., France, Germany, Spain, and Israel, alongside countries in eastern Europe and Asia.

“In the past year we have nearly doubled our presence in France as the global pandemic has made hygiene an even more critical issue for hospitals,” said Yariv Matzliach, CEO of Polytex. He added that “France is currently one of our largest and strategic markets in Europe and has tremendous growth potential.”

“Polytex’s technology system helped to simplify the distribution of workwear in the hospital and led to a 40% reduction in expenses on uniforms,” said Bernard Loulier, laundry manager at the Centre Hospitalier Regional d’Orleans (CHR), the largest hospital in Orleans. He noted that the actual volume of workwear was reduced as were the amount of storage space needed. The first Polytex station in Orleans was installed at the 5000-staff hospital in 2016. The hospital currently has ten stations installed for dispensing and return of uniforms.