Draft:Tal Patalon

Tal Tova Patalon (born May 19, 1974) is an Israeli doctor and researcher, She is Head of the Kahn Sagol Maccabi Research and Innovation Center (KSM) at Maccabi Healthcare Services, and the Founder of Medāna, a global health AI company.

Patalon is an active clinician specializing in family medicine and emergency medicine, a high-tech entrepreneur, lawyer, mediator, as well as an AI-integrated medical technology specialist. In the past, Patalon served as Head of the Palliative Care Unit at Wolfson Medical Center; more recently, she led the Innovation Department at Assuta Ashdod Medical Center.

In 2024, Nature Magazine chose to feature Patalon as one of four changemakers who bring fresh perspectives to long-standing health challenges through big-data analytics and AI.

She is also a regular contributor to Forbes on issues pertaining to innovation and medicine,   some of her articles have been chosen as an Editor’s Pick.

Since 2022, Patalon hosts A Matter of Life and Death, a podcast in which she conducts in-depth conversations with doctors, researchers, and other leaders in the field of science,   technology, economics, finance, artificial intelligence,  research, and media. Prominent guests have included economist Prof. Nouriel Roubini, Israeli-American astrophysicist Prof. Avi Loeb, and Former Head of Mossad Yossi Cohen.

Early Life and Education
Patalon was born in Tel Aviv. She grew up and went to school in Holon; in her youth, she was a social activist. She began her compulsory military service as a teacher-soldier and completed her service as an officer (rank of lieutenant) in 1995.

In 2002 she earned her Doctor of Medicine (M.D) degree from Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary. She has specialist degrees in family medicine and emergency medicine, along with certification in palliative medicine, from Tel Aviv University.

In 2007, she earned a LL.B. from Ono Academic College and is licensed to practice law. She specialized in tort law and medical malpractice in the law firm Shahal & HaEzrachi. Patalon has an MBA in Healthcare Innovation from Reichman University, and is certified in legal mediation from Gome Gevim College.

In 2022, she completed a certificate program focusing on sequencing technologies and genetic testing, as well as new treatments for inflammatory, autoimmune, and allergic diseases at Harvard Medical School.

Professional career
In 2005, she started working as a family doctor at Clalit Health Services, and then served as an emergency medicine doctor at the Wolfson Medical Center. Later, she established the first unit for palliative care as part of the emergency medicine services at the Wolfson Medical Center. Under her leadership and with the help of donations, including from the Israeli Cancer Association, a dedicated supportive care room was established within the emergency medicine department to provide multidisciplinary care to patients in need. In 2017, she managed the Outpatient Department at the Wolfson Medical Center.

In 2011, she founded Karov, Palliative Care Ltd, a public benefit corporation to promote palliative care initiatives, with emphasis on end-of-life compassionate care.

In 2018, she was appointed Head of the Innovation Department at Assuta Ashdod University Hospital, where she also served as a senior physician in the emergency medicine department.

In 2023, she lectured at Reichman University on the relationship between health, big data and ethics.

KSM (Kahn-Sagol-Maccabi) Research and Innovation Center of Maccabi Healthcare Services.
As of 2020, Patalon serves as the Head of Maccabi Health Services'  (Kahn Sagol Maccabi) Research and Innovation Center (KSM), where she leads initiatives in research, development, and international health policy. In this capacity, she manages the Tipa Biobank, Israel's largest-scale biobank for research.

Under her leadership, the Center has spearheaded groundbreaking research integrating AI, innovative epidemiological methodologies, biostatistical modeling, genetics and clinical studies that have propelled changes in health policies and medical treatment.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Patalon played a pivotal role in shaping health policy and fostering international collaboration to combat the crisis. She led KSM’s data-driven research that provided new insights into natural immunity, childhood infections,  viral load indices, and more, thereby enabling data-driven management of the epidemic.

She coined the term Small-Big-Data, a research approach based on a continuous loop of feedback supported by insights from big data and clinical experts who improve them. Under her direction, KSM's groundbreaking research helped shape global health policy, including White House policy, and enriched knowledge in the field of medical innovation.

Patalon has led the development of the organization’s advanced and secure digital infrastructure that enables data-intensive multi-Omics research, thus making KSM one of the most advanced research institutes in the world in terms of cloud-based health research, equipped with advanced technological tools to support the development of artificial intelligence models.

Dr. Patalon has established many successful partnerships with world leaders and prominent health industry figures; for example, she has helped forge strategic medical research agreements with the United Arab Emirates  and Bahrain.

Among her main research areas:


 * COVID-19: Patalon has conducted studies on reinfection in children,  reinfection in adults,  naturally acquired immunity,  benefits of the third vaccine,  waning effectiveness of the third vaccine, waning effectiveness of a fourth vaccine compared to a third vaccine and effects of the vaccine on household transmission.
 * Research on Mpox: In 2023, Patalon co-authored studies on the monkeypox epidemic in Israel.
 * Parvovirus B19: In 2023, Patalon led a study, later published in Viruses, which revealed a renewed outbreak of the Parvovirus B19 virus, and that Israel was, as of 2023, in the midst of the largest and longest outbreak of the virus reported so far.