User:Hodik g/Varda Shalev

Varda Shalev (born in 1959) is an Israeli a researcher, family physician, and professor of epidemiology at the University of Tel Aviv. Prof. Shalev has been the Director of the Khan-Sagol Maccabi Research and Innovation Institute, also known as "Maccabitech", at Maccabi Health Services since 2015.

Prof. Shalev was born and grew up in Beersheba, Israel to the Borst family. Prof. Shalev is married to Benjamin Shalev, an optometrist, and is the mother of three children. After completing her medical school education at Ben Gurion University, Shalev specialized in family medicine and worked as a rural physician at the Chatzor Kibbutz and nearby agricultural communities. Prof. Shalev completed her residency in family medicine and earned an MPA in Public Health Administration at Clark University. In the years 1998-2000, Shalev completed her fellowship in medical informatics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

In addition to her work as a family physician with Maccabi Health Services in Rosh Haayin, Israel, Prof. Shalev established the first department of medical bioinformatics in Israel at Maccabi Health Services. As part of this work, Prof. Shalev was involved in digitalizing the medical information of Maccabi members and making the large sums of medical data at Maccabi accessible for research. After managing the Department of Primary Medicine, Prof. Shalev was appointed to be the Director of the Institute for Health Research and Innovation in 2015.

Research and Development in the Field of Big Data in Medicine
Professor Shalev's research has focused primarily on the use of big data from Maccabi Health Services for medical and preventive medicine research. Shalev has over 150 publications in peer reviewed journals. Her research in combination with the Medial Company established a computerized system for identifying Maccabi members at heightened risk for colon cancer by analyzing their data from routine blood tests. This system for identifying high risk individuals was granted permission for use by the Israeli Ministry of Health and was validated multiple times in peer reviewed articles in Israel, by health organizations in Europe and the United States, and by local newspapers. In 2017, Prof. Shalev won the Health Initiative competition run by Reboot Forum and Globes newspaper which was named as the leading competition for 2017 for establishing the biologic database known as "A Drop for Research". Today, the database contains over 120,000 Maccabi members with the goal of developing personalized medicine methods. As Director of the Institute for Health Research and Innovation, Prof. Shalev has initiated and implemented different tools based on the big data of Maccabi members. These include the K App designed for the self-diagnosing of diseases in collaboration with the K Health company as well as developing and implementing a computerized pathological system for automatically identifying large growths in the prostate glands. In 2016, Prof. Shalev was a partner in the MKM initiative funded by Morris Khan aimed at making the Maccabi data accessible for external researchers and academics.

In 2017, Prof. Shalev was chosen by the newspaper The Marker as one of the "One Hundred Leaders in Israel". In 2018, Prof. Shalev received the prize for Excellence in Medical System Logistics by the Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Health for her development and implementation of the system for early detection of large cancerous growths in the colon. In a Harvard University School of Business Case Study published in 2019, Maccabitech, led by Prof. Shalev, was described as "the promise of the health information systems in Israel”

Married to Benjamin Shalev, an oculoplastic surgeon, and mother to three children.

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55757

https://www.maccabitech.com/