Research Community
Psifas is a national project for the promotion of health in Israel, with the joint participation of the Ministries of Health, Treasury, Defense, Education, the CHE (Council for Higher Education), the PBC (Planning and Budgeting Committee), the National Digital Agency and the Innovation Authority. It is managed through inter-university cooperation and currently operates in partnerships with Clalit Health Services and the Rabin, Carmel, Soroka, Lynn, HaEmek, and the Sheba, Ichilov, Wolfson and Hadassah Medical Centers. Within Israel, the project is overseen by the Privacy Protection Authority and the National Cyber Directorate.
The State of Israel is notable for the unique genetic diversity of its population. Despite this, the genetics of most communities in Israel have so far only been studied in a very superficial way, due to either low numbers of participants in the study, or only partial genetic mapping being performed. One of the goals of the Psifas project is to review the genetic diversity of Israel’s communities, among other things, as comprehensively as possible, thereby enabling all communities within the country to benefit from the project’s results in the most egalitarian way.
As part of the project, we sample around 50 individuals from each of the approximately 60 sub-populations in Israel. These will include Jews from various denominations, Muslims from different regions of Israel, and members of other religions and communities. Sequencing the genomes of these groups will represent a breakthrough in genetic research in Israel, enabling, for the first time, medical and population genetics studies on the entire population. In this way we can, for example, which genetic variations are related to a disease and which are simply random variations, or why a certain group is more resistant to a certain disease while another is more susceptible to it. Furthermore, it will be possible to learn about the biology of genome variation over time, as well as to study migrations or other demographic events that have occurred within Israeli sub-populations.
In addition, through the establishment of a national health research data system that combines medical and genetic information, we will be able to identify chronic diseases like diabetes, liver and kidney disease, cancer, and stroke, and treat them more effectively.
The decision to launch this project has put the State of Israel at the forefront of modern healthcare, shoulder to shoulder with the world’s most advanced countries, such as the USA and UK, which have also decided to establish large medical and genetic databases for the advancement of medical science.
Researchers from industry, such as startups companies conducting scientific feasibility studies, as well as researchers from academia and healthcare. Collaborative ventures are welcome and will also receive priority access.
The information that will be made available to you as researcher may include clinical data with details of diagnoses, operations, lab test results, and drug treatments as relate to the patients who have volunteered to participate in the database over the past 20+ years.
Two types of research can be performed using the Psifas database:
a) Retrospective studies based on the genetic clinical data found in the Psifas database (the project is currently in the stages of collecting information).
b) Prospective studies focusing on specific groups with unique characteristics, such as certain diseases or special risk factors.