Investing in the Adults of Tomorrow: The Clalit-Schneider Children’s Medical Center has launched SCVC, Israel’s first and the world’s third investment fund dedicated exclusively to pediatric healthcare innovation. Combining world-leading clinical expertise, extensive medical data and advanced AI capabilities, the fund aims to identify and accelerate the next breakthroughs in children’s health. With $50 million targeted for fundraising, SCVC has already raised NIS 20 million
Wednesday, Nov 4th – The Clalit-Schneider Children’s Medical Center, part of Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest healthcare organization, is expanding its research and innovation activities with the launch of SCVC (Schneider Children’s Venture Capital), an investment fund dedicated to innovation in pediatric healthcare.
The fund brings together investors from the business sector, offering them not only a business opportunity but also the chance to help shape the future of healthcare in Israel and around the world.
Just eight months after its establishment, SCVC has already evaluated more than 170 ventures, completed its first three investments in pioneering companies, and is advancing additional investment opportunities. The fund is now seeking to expand its circle of investors and strategic partners, strengthening its ability to identify, evaluate and accelerate breakthrough technologies in pediatric medicine. The first of its kind in Israel and the third in the world, SCVC is raising $50 million.
The fund was established around a fundamental principle: better health in adulthood begins in childhood. Beyond treating the children of today, Schneider aims to identify and accelerate medical innovations that can transform their health in the years ahead and make a difference throughout their lives.
SCVC is not simply another hospital-backed investment fund. It is built on the unique advantages of Schneider and Clalit Health Services: a combination of leading clinical expertise, extensive medical databases, an exceptional longitudinal record of patient care, and advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
Together, these assets make it possible to analyze information from multiple sources, identify complex patterns, develop predictive models and explore medical questions that were virtually impossible to answer just a few years ago. This opens new possibilities for early disease detection, personalized medicine and the development of innovative solutions specifically designed for children’s health.
A different investment model, built around clinical innovation
SCVC’s distinctive advantage lies not only in its direct connection to Schneider’s clinical environment and medical experts, or its access to Clalit’s extensive medical data, but also in its investment de-risking model, which operates both before and after an investment.
This approach enables the fund to invest in early-stage companies whose potential value creation may materialize within a relatively short timeframe of just five years. By testing teams and products in real-world clinical settings before investing, SCVC can reduce investment risk and subsequently accelerate companies’ development, refine their business models and support their path to market.
The model is designed to generate both medical value and financial returns for investors, while also creating value for Israel’s healthcare system.
The fund’s first investments and partnerships already reflect the areas of innovation it intends to prioritize: artificial intelligence capable of predicting medical treatment outcomes and generating insights from real-time medical data; adapting longevity technologies for use in pediatric medicine; and advanced, non-invasive tools for early diagnosis.
For SCVC, the goal goes beyond investing in companies. It is about connecting entrepreneurs with Schneider’s clinical expertise, researchers and patients, accelerating the journey from a medical idea to real-world clinical application.
From preventive medicine to proactive healthcare
The launch of SCVC is part of a broader vision at the Clalit-Schneider Children’s Medical Center: to help today’s children become tomorrow’s healthy adults.
Children account for approximately 30% of Israel’s population, yet many of the technologies and medications currently used in pediatric medicine were originally developed for adults. Schneider and Clalit aim to change this paradigm by promoting Pediatric Tech, medical innovation designed specifically for children rather than adapted from solutions developed for adults.
The motivation goes beyond providing children with more personalized treatment. Schneider aims to gradually move from preventive medicine towards proactive healthcare, capable of identifying disease before symptoms appear and, in some cases, preventing the need for future medical intervention altogether.
This approach considers the entire developmental journey from childhood through adolescence and into young adulthood, recognizing that the roots of many physical and mental health conditions that emerge later in life can be traced back to childhood.
Alongside developing more precise and advanced treatments, the objective is to identify risk factors at an early stage, develop new prevention strategies and shift from a healthcare model focused on treating disease to one that protects health before illness develops.
Building on more than three decades of pediatric medical innovation
SCVC builds on more than three decades of medical care, research and technological innovation at the forefront of pediatric medicine at Schneider, as well as the advantages of being part of Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest healthcare organization, which holds one of the world’s most extensive medical databases.
The center benefits from access to extensive, longitudinal patient records and a unique knowledge base that includes clinical information reflecting patients’ development from childhood into young adulthood.
Schneider is also home to Israel’s only innovation and research center dedicated entirely to children’s health, bringing together physicians, researchers, entrepreneurs and companies to develop solutions specifically designed for children.
Over the years, Schneider’s innovation activities have contributed to a series of breakthroughs in pediatric medicine in Israel and internationally. This clinical and research infrastructure provides the foundation on which SCVC aims to build the next generation of pediatric innovation, including cellular and genetic therapies for diabetes, cancer and other complex diseases.
In June of this year, for example, a Schneider medical team, working in collaboration with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and partners from the biotechnology industry, administered the world’s first gene therapy treatment to a child suffering from a rare and life-threatening syndrome.
While this treatment was not an investment by SCVC, it illustrates the clinical and innovation ecosystem from which the fund draws its unique advantage.
Investing in children’s health means investing in lifelong health
Prof. Efrat Baron Harlev, Director of the Clalit-Schneider Children’s Medical Center, said:
“At Schneider, we work every day to provide children with the best possible medical care available today. But our responsibility also extends to thinking about the medicine they will need in the future. The establishment of SCVC allows us to transform the clinical knowledge, experience and innovation generated here into a driving force for the medicine of tomorrow.
“For us, innovation is not just a way to provide better care for the child in front of us today. It is also a way to influence the person that child will become in the future. One hundred percent of adults were once children. From our perspective, investing in children’s health means investing in health throughout life.”
Ronen Gadot, Managing Partner at SCVC, said:
“SCVC’s advantage lies in the direct connection between the investment world and the medical world. We operate within the clinical system, encounter medical needs and challenges firsthand, and can identify promising technologies at an early stage, evaluate them and reduce risk before capital is invested. Following an investment, we can continue accelerating the development of these companies.
“Our first few months have demonstrated that this model provides access to opportunities that are difficult to identify through traditional investment approaches.
“But the uniqueness of our model goes beyond identifying and advancing medical innovation. It is a double-impact model that connects medical value with financial returns. Alongside investing for profit in technologies that could transform the future of healthcare, a portion of the fund’s profits will be returned to Schneider. This means that the more successful the fund becomes, the greater the resources that can be reinvested in research, innovation and pediatric medicine. “We now want to expand the circle of partners who will join us on this journey.”
Dr. Shirley Saar, Director of Clalit-Schneider’s Innovation Center, said:
“Our focus on children, and particularly on the healthy child, reflects a strategic shift led by Schneider: protecting health rather than fighting only the complications of disease. These include conditions that go undiagnosed, those identified too late, and those that have already become a reality on the ground, leaving lasting scars, limiting patients’ lives and imposing significant economic costs on the healthcare system.
“The establishment of this fund is fundamentally changing the economic landscape of pediatric healthcare. For the first time, stakeholders from across Israel’s economy are joining forces behind this vision, recognizing that helping a healthy child become a healthy adult represents an opportunity to create an impact that can extend across 120 years and fundamentally improve public health.”