A rapidly evolving field that combines health with digital technologies. This broad field includes products ranging from wearable health sensors, AI Big Data decision support solutions to personal medicine and remote healthcare. Soroka University Medical Center with Clalit Health Services, has the largest digital data pool in the world, providing health services to approximately 67% of the Negev and Southern region. The combination of a single hospital providing services to such a large population with a large amount of medical data, gives Soroka, and it’s Collaborators the advantage and possibility to produce, computerize and create value efficiently out of health data. Companies that will establish collaboration with the hospital and locate themselves in the Innovation District can get access to physicians, opportunities to observe procedures in a clinical field and to leverage health data on (population of almost a million) from cradle to grave, and the ability to test and validate solutions using the centralized health system.

Desert technologies are an amalgamation of specializations that use desert areas and conditions to conceive of innovations (knowledge, processes, and technologies) in food, water, and energy. Our warming planet elevates the role and importance of desert technologies on a massive scale. According to the UN, by 2025, 1.8 billion people will experience “absolute water scarcity” with two-thirds of the world living in water-scarce conditions. The escalating effects of climate change, population growth, and the fact that most land reserves are in drylands mean that our reliance on areas with arid conditions as sources of food, water, and energy will only increase. This global phenomenon will require out-of-the-box solutions, including new technologies. Located on the edge of the Negev desert, Be’er Sheva and the broader region’s arid ecosystem are a natural laboratory for studying the effects of climate change. Over time, BGU has amassed over 70 researchers in sustainable agriculture, water, and energy at research institutes. The BGU researchers in robotics and remote sensing are driving new applications in AgTech. At the same time, Soroka, in partnership with BGU, has established the Negev Environmental Health Research Institute (NEHRI) to study the effects of climate change on human health. A new hub on desert tech in the Innovation District will be designed to capture the synergies among the different actors, and create a Hotspot where research challenges are solved through multi-disciplinary teams and much more.

Be’er Sheva is a rising hot spot for cybersecurity. Government Decision No. 546 especially contributed to this by injecting funding into this professional field and by the national initiative of relocating the IDF’s elite technological units to Be’er Sheva and surrounding areas. Continued support by the government, led by INCD, has been extensive, including an incentive for all cyber-related non-government organizations to locate in Be’er Sheva. It also includes the relocation of Israel’s national CERT to Be’er Sheva’s Advanced Technologies Park; innovation labs for cyber in transportation, FinTech, and energy. Today, at the Advanced Technologies Park there are over 2,500 engineers and companies such as Dell-EMC, Oracle, RAFAEL, JVP Cyber Labs, IBM, AllScripts-dbmotion, The Cyber @ BGU research center, including Innovation Labs of Deutsche Telekom, The Center for Computational Criminology in cooperation with the government of Israel and more. Over 160 researchers, students, and technical staff conduct their research within these and other research centers. The relocation of approximately 6,000 IDF soldiers into the Innovation District in 2023 will add a critical mass of trained soldiers.