TRANSFORMING THE MEDICAL JOURNEY: WOTCH BRINGS ORDER TO CARE MANAGEMENT
Effective medical management is a crucial area of our lives - an area where we expect things to run smoothly. Yet, it is packed with tasks, coordination and ongoing effort, making it complex, time-consuming, and often confusing. Wotch, an Israeli startup, has developed a smart care-orchestration platform that acts as a virtual assistant and operational backbone for both clinicians and patients. Its innovative tools plan, track, and manage every step of the patient's journey, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.
Most of us have sat in front of our family physician and left with a long list of tasks - prescriptions to fill, lab tests to complete, specialist referrals to schedule, and imaging appointments that require special preparation. We nod as if everything is clear, but the moment we step outside, the instructions quickly blur. We're left confused, overwhelmed and unsure where to begin.
For chronic patients - and for those caring for elderly parents or young children - the challenge is even greater. The volume of information and complexity of what has to be done can be enormous. And yet the success of treatment depends heavily on the patient. Do we understand what needs to be done? Will we remember to follow through? Can we schedule everything correctly and on time? Too many patients struggle to follow their clinician's instructions and end up lost in the system.
"What people don't realize is that the same thing happens on the clinician's side as well," says Dr. Enav Noff Sadeh, family physician and founder and CEO of Wotch. "Clinicians have no way of knowing what happens after a patient leaves the room unless the patient chooses to come back. Medical systems operate episodically while patient health is continuous, with problems that evolve and change over time. It's not like ordering from Amazon, where you can track the package at every step. In medical care, there's no such visibility - and it's time to change that."
Removing Hurdles for Both Clinicians and Patients
"A big hurdle in medical care is that when confusion and uncertainty become too much for patients, they stop complying," says Dr. Noff Sadeh. "That's why we created Wotch: to remove the hurdles for both clinicians and patients. Wotch allows clinicians to be clinicians, and patients to be patients - while it takes care of the rest."
She describes a world in which the patient's only task is, for example, to take their medication. The Wotch platform ensures that prescriptions are ready on time, automatically schedules appointments, and synchronizes the progress of the entire care plan for both clinicians and patients.
Medicine, Medical Administration and Everything In-between
Dr. Noff Sadeh has spent 20 years as a board-certified family physician at Maccabi Healthcare Service, Tel Aviv, Israel, and during the last 15 of them built a parallel career as senior medical executive. In addition to her medical training, she has completed a subspecialty in medical administration and holds an MBA. With these qualifications, she established Maccabi's national family medicine division and has taken on a variety of leadership roles, including Deputy Head of Maccabi's Medical Department. It is this combination of clinical and management experience that led her to found Wotch in 2021.
Wotch is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, and employs some 30 people, spanning research and development, service delivery, and customer support .Iddo Gescheit, General Manager for North America, works alongside Dr. Noff Sadeh. A biomedical engineer (B.Sc., M.Sc.) with two decades of experience in global medical innovation, he began his career in a medical device startup and co-led the company through its acquisition by the pharmaceutical giant Roche. He then founded and led a biotech startup, spent several years as a venture capitalist specializing in healthtech, and later returned to entrepreneurship - where he met Dr. Noff Sadeh.
"The first reaction we hear from people is: 'How is it possible that a platform like Wotch doesn't already exist?'" he says. "And they're right. We're talking about a fundamental change in how medical services are delivered and consumed. Our platform sits at the heart of medical operations, and the feedback we get from physicians and patients shows we're on the right path."
Our Big Insight
"We realized that medical care is essentially a complex project that needs to be managed," explains Gescheit. "It has goals, milestones, tasks and due dates, with its success depending on coordinated action among many different stakeholders. Other industries solved similar challenges long ago - from software development, to sales management, to construction. Healthcare hasn't. In our ecosystem, one person plans, another executes, and others coordinate and synchronize, but no one oversees the project in its entirety. Our approach relies on adopting proven project-management frameworks and best practices, and tailoring them to healthcare's unique workflows, systems and regulations."
How It Works
"We built a platform that receives a clinician's longitudinal care plan and translates it into a structured project plan with the necessary tasks, priorities, and due dates," explains Dr. Noff Sadeh. "Smart automated tools then take over - issuing orders, sending reminders, verifying completion, checking results and more. Each stakeholder - clinicians, patients, care teams, administrators - uses a dedicated interface all synchronized to the same care plan."
From Pilot to Commercial Success: Maccabi Sets a New Standard in Family Medicine
Following a year-long pilot with Maccabi Healthcare Services in family medicine, Wotch and Maccabi signed a commercial agreement.
"Wotch is currently used by 130 clinicians and over 35,000 patients," says Dr. Noff Sadeh. "Survey results show high patient satisfaction. The platform provides clarity on what needs to be done, reduces anxiety and instills a sense of confidence that their care is being tracked. They feel held - and that they can trust the process."
Clinicians also love it. "Engagement is surprisingly high," she continues. "The platform allows them to be proactive and trust their instructions are being followed. If they're not, the platform alerts them early enough so that they can intervene. It frees them from being buried in front of the screen, allowing them to focus on the patient and practice better medicine."
Looking Ahead: The US Market and Beyond
Wotch is backed by an investment fund and is preparing for its next funding round to accelerate activity in the United States. "Over the past year, we have put significant effort into figuring out the best way to translate the proven model in Israel to the U.S. healthcare market," says Gescheit. "We discovered that our platform can provide even greater value there. It's incredibly exciting to see a platform born in Israel take shape abroad and bring meaningful value to clinical teams and patients alike."
Wotch is a graduate of the Assuta Medical Center's RISE program, run in collaboration with the Philadelphia Science Center, and of the prestigious U.S. PHIR (Provider Health Innovation Roundtable) program, an exclusive, invite-only program and community within the World 50 Accelerator. Last month, the company had the privilege of presenting on stage at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas as a finalist in the Startup Pitch Competition.
The Vision
"Our vision is global expansion," says Dr. Noff Sadeh. "Our approach fits multiple markets because the language of project management is universal. While health systems differ, we built our platform so it can adapt easily. And we already see opportunities for its use beyond primary care - in oncology, women's health, and many other clinical domains."
In collaboration with Wotch
