46 | AUGUST 12 • 2021
HEALTH
M
illions of mental health sufferers
struggle with the impression
that no one else knows exactly
how they feel. A new Israeli partnership
with a Detroit connection seeks to change
things.
Ziv Yekutieli, Ph.D., studied both
electrical engineering and medicine at the
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in
Haifa and Tel Aviv University and worked
at Intel, where he was hoping he could
develop chips to be implanted in the brains
of disabled people and stroke survivors.
Once he had realized that was not the case,
he and his friend Dima Gershman left the
company and founded Montfort (Mon4t)
in 2017.
Talking to doctors, Yekutieli realized
that they did not need new technology,
but ways to use existing technology more
efficiently.
“The patient isn’t in the clinic 99.9% of
the time,” Yekutieli said. “With diabetes or
cardiovascular or lung diseases, it doesn’t
matter when you catch the person. In
neurology, it’s an entirely different world.
Things greatly vary day to day, moment to
moment.”
Mon4t’s first proof of concept was
a home version of a common test for
Parkinson’s patients. In 2018, the company
won the Henry Ford Health System’s
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Challenge. Professor Peter
LeWitt, the director of the
Parkinson’s Disease and
Movement Disorders Program
at the hospital, has since become
an adviser to the company, and recently, its
chief medical officer.
Detroit was also the first U.S. city
that Yekutieli had visited, as part of an
American Technion Society delegation.
“In neurology, you don’t put a
thermometer into the patient’s mouth
and get a temperature,” Yekutieli said.
“We quickly realized that if we wanted to
make something holistic and agile, for a
Israeli company aims to help
mental health patients with
new technology.
AMIR SHOAM CONTRIBUTING WRITER
There’s An
App for That
Dr. Ziv
Yekutieli
MONTFORT