The following interview appeared February 11, 2015, in YNet Magazine. YNet is one of the major Israeli news and general-content distributors. It is the online outlet for the Yedioth Ahronot newspaper.

“Seeing Around Corners – An Interview With Noted Inventer Josh Shachar”

You would think someone who holds over 160 patents on innovations he helped develop, has been the visionary founder and leader of more than 10 successful high-technology companies, has been responsible for advances in revolutionizing mapping, control and guidance technologies that continue to define protocols and innovation for our nation’s defense systems and healthcare industry, and has written and published countless research papers, peer-reviewed articles and even a novel or two, would be happy to sit back on his laurels enjoying the rest of his days on a tropical beach with an umbrella drink in his hand.

You would think – but then again, you have never met Josh (Yehoshua) Shachar.

Where most might look at these accomplishments as monuments to their success, Josh sees all of these as simply milestones on a journey that began when he was a young child. A journey in which there is no destination but rather an ongoing exploration to see what lies around the next corner.

Born in 1956 in Haifa, Israel, Josh recalls even from his earliest days being someone whose passion was to learn the “why” behind all things. From trying to figure out how a particular machine worked, to understanding the rules of socio/political interaction, to even looking up at the stars at night and pondering the big questions of how the whole universe fit together; Josh has been single-minded in his determination to understand “why.”

“For me, it has never been about making a mark or achieving some lofty position. Rather, my life has been a continuous search to understand how things work and then to ask ‘Can we do it better? Can we do it smarter?”

This passion for innovation has lain at the core of everything Josh has set his mind to. Along the way, his process has been influenced by the works of giants such as Spinoza, Augustine, Faulkner, Joyce and most of all Sir D’Arcy Thompson, whose work On Growth and Form firmly established in Josh’s mind that the best answers can always be found in looking at the simplicity of nature’s systems and then transposing those observations to whatever technological or engineering problem was at hand.

Josh has been at the forefront of optimizing control and guidance systems for the Department of Defense (DOD) in the avionics, missile defense and aerospace industries as well as adapting these technologies for commercial aviation use. Two of Josh’s companies, Edel Engineering and Engineered Magnetics, continue to be important contributors to these market sectors 20 years after their inception.

Today, Josh’s vision is set on taking his work in developing technologies that guide and control multi-million dollar aircraft and missiles and re-visioning it to create the next generation of smart medical device technologies that will benefit all mankind across a broad platform of disease issues.

In a recent interview held in Josh’s office at Magnetecs, one of the companies dedicated to this new vision, Josh gave us some insight into the new direction that he and his colleagues are targeting.

YNET – In broad brush, can you tell us about your shift from DOD and aerospace work, where you have been highly successful, to this new focus on medical device technologies?

Josh – The idea came about from the convergence of two circumstances. The first was when I had an opportunity to speak with Edwin Teller when my team and I were doing some advanced military work for the U.S Department of Defense. Teller, who was arguably one of the greatest physicists of our time, spoke to us about the need to move away from a military complex mindset to one of “Dual-Use Technology” where whatever work we were doing could be adapted over to civilian application. He obviously foresaw not only the movement away from the dependence on defense budgets but also the growing opportunity for commercialization of the technologies we were creating. The second incident was a personal one. My mother developed heart issues and at one point had to have some cardio-catheter work done. I was fortunate to be able to watch the procedure. As I watched the doctor manually pushing and pulling this thin wire through my mother’s body using nothing but his experience and a fluoroscope, my mantra began to go off in my head, Can we do this better? Can we do this smarter?

This was in 1998. I knew at that point where the next phase of my work needed to go. So together with my long-time colleague, Dr. Eli Gang and my research team, we began the first steps to envisioning a method by which a catheter could be guided through a human body using magnetic energy as the engine and robotic mapping and control as the navigation system. In 2002 we founded Magnetecs and in 2003 we filed our first patent called “Apparatus and Method for Catheter Guidance Control and Imaging” for the technology we envisioned.

YNET – Can you describe what that technology is?

Josh – Our first goal was on developing what we call our Catheter Guidance Control and Imaging system or CGCI for short. In essence what we have been able to develop is a way to lens, or focus if you will, the very powerful magnetic fields generated by eight electro-magnetic lobes to a central point in 3-dimensional space. By adjusting the intensity of the field output from each of these magnetic lobes we can change where in space that focus point is. We have combined this ability with an advanced mapping technology and robotic guidance control system that allows a physician to now control the movement of a specially designed catheter inside a living human body to not only visualize in a real-time 3-dimensional the environment in which it is traveling, but to record and memorize the exact pathway so that the catheter can be returned to a particular site at any time at the virtual push of a button.

YNET – What benefit does CGCI bring to a physician, and more importantly, a patient?

Josh – CGCI provides a giant leap forward in how catheter-based procedures can now be done. First and foremost, we are changing the entire dynamic of how a catheter is moved from Point A to Point B. Instead of a physician pushing a thin wire through literally several feet of a complex, moving and dynamic system, CGCI uses magnetic energy to pull the catheter into place. Think of a thin wire, like a fish line on the ground, and you want to move it forward. Pushing on it to guide it is extremely ineffective and difficult to get the other end to go where you want it to go. Now go to the other end and pull the fish line to where you want it to go. Much easier, yes? Because our system is able to precisely locate a target site and to visualize the transit of the catheter from Point A to Point B and use magnetic energy to pull the catheter to its destination, we have profoundly decreased the problems of manual navigation associated with the current method.

Second, because our system uses a very controlled and focused magnetic energy that provides robotic-control assistance to the operating physician, we greatly reduce the procedural time, radiation exposure levels and procedure repetition issues that patients have to face.

Finally, CGCI is operated completely via a remote operating suite. Technically, the physician does not even have to be in the same room as the patient. This leads to the potential of being able to perform life-saving catheter-based procedures, like catheter ablations, for people with Atrial fibrillation which is the cause of more than 350,000 deaths each year in the U.S. alone.

YNET – You mentioned Atrial fibrillation. Is this the only application for CGCI?

Josh – Atrial fibrillation or AFib, is only one area where CGCI has potential use. We focused on AFib at the outset because it was Dr. Gang’s specialty and because we saw it as the best path to developing our Proof of Concept. I should mention that as a result, CGCI as a technology has now received complete clearance for commercialization in Europe and Korea. We have achieved all required certification for use in the U.S. and are now working towards our FDA approval. In addition we have CGCI suites now in four countries and our installation rollout continues to expand as more clinical data from our trials comes in and more physicians are becoming aware of the benefit.

The future of CGCI as a navigation and delivery vehicle for not only known catheter-based surgeries but also nano-technology based treatments and other procedures that currently require invasive surgery, is tremendous. Obviously, cardio-disease treatment is a much larger arena than just AFib and we intend to play an important role in that, but also in areas of gastro-intestinal, obstetrics, neurological, and pulmonary disease to name a few. Basically anywhere a physician needs to provide a treatment where the precise delivery of a medicine, a treatment protocol, or the visualization of a site is critical, and where our system can provide a more effective solution in cost, efficacy and most of all success rates, we intend to provide CGCI as that delivery and navigation system.

YNET – So that’s CGCI but you have mentioned that since 2002, you have greatly expanded the vision. Can you tell us about other technologies in play or on the drawing boards?

Josh – Originally our concept was to develop the best way possible for a physician to move a catheter through a patient’s body. A metaphor I like to use is to think of CGCI system being a smart medical device version of Amazon’s delivery system has very relevant parallels and has led the development of my work in a variety of complementary technologies. At first, our vehicle only delivered an alternative for AFib, much like Amazon only delivered books at first. Now we have developed the system to the point where we can and are actively pursuing other products our vehicle can deliver. Also since we are using our unique technology to navigate and visualize our delivery routes, we have begun to develop new technologies based on what we can do with that data and whom it can benefit.

Under Magnetecs, the focus is on our CGCI delivery system and how to continue to improve it. The obvious next step after developing the better delivery engine and navigation system, was to build a better car that could complement and use this technology. In this case, a better catheter.

Using what we learned from creating CGCI, we have now developed the next generation of electrode catheters for the Electro-Physiology (EP) market. This new catheter which is called MOSFET and stands for Metal-Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor, provides physicians a quantum leap jump into being able to see and gather data from a catheter. At the core of MOSFET was again this very simple and elegant solution, which was possible because of the unique way in which we approach problems here at Magnetecs. Rather than getting more and more complex in our technology, we look to nature’s incredible ability to evolve the most efficient form to achieve a function and then see where our technology can be adapted. In this case, much as with CGCI where we just took the basic and accepted principle of having to push a catheter and said “Why don’t we try pulling it instead”, with MOSFET we said, “Why are putting the eyes and brains for the catheter in the ‘feet’ or end of the catheter instead of at the tip?” Seems logical enough but no one had ever tried it. We have been able to miniaturize the sensing mechanism and all the associated data processing components needed for an EP electrode catheter and mount it in the tip of the catheter. By doing so, we in effect have turned the signal processing and information collection capabilities from existing electrode catheters on the market today, from low-definition 1950’s broadcast television into 4K Ultra-High definition digital information which a physician can interact and control. The impact on the EP market is going to be gigantic and the benefit to the patient population will be stunning.

We also have a sister company called Pharmaco-Kinesis Corporation (PKC) which is focused on our smart medical device development for disease detection, prevention and treatment. Our two lead products at PKC are the BioSensor and the Metronomic Biofeedback Pump (MBP).

With BioSensor, we have created a whole new cost-effective portable system to detect pathogens and viruses at a level previously not possible outside a sophisticated lab, and to do so in a much shorter time frame; minutes compared to days or weeks. The applications for this in areas such as food-safety, virus testing for things like the Ebola and Marburg virus, in-home screening for various cancer types, and many others, are incredible.

The MBP promises to be the first micro-miniaturized device that will be capable of delivering drug therapy directly to a site while providing 24/7 bio-sensing data back to the physician of the efficacy of the treatment. At the same time, the systems Wi-Fi capability allows the physician to monitor, control and adjust the devices operation from anywhere on the planet. One area where this shows great promise is for those people suffering Leptomeningeal Carcinomatosis, a form of brain cancer whose survival rate even with treatment is dismal. With MBP, we will be able to deliver chemotherapeutics personally tailored for a specific patient’s disease state, directly into the tumor site instead of the current forms of systemic treatment like chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

YNET – All of this sounds pretty amazing. What is next for you and your team?

Josh – There are many things we have on our Blue Sky list but right now our focus is on bringing our existing technologies to market as quickly as possible so patients can start realizing the benefits we believe our innovations holds. All I can say is that with each step forward we get closer to seeing one vision come to fruition but for me, it will always be one step closer to the next corner and what lies there for me to discover.