Longevity AI and Researchers from Meir Medical Center of the Clalit Health Group Collaborate on Chronic Disease Risk Prediction Research

TEL AVIV, Israel & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 28, 2026--

Longevity AI, a clinical intelligence company helping healthcare organizations deliver proactive, preventive care at scale, today announced a joint research collaboration with clinicians and researchers from Meir Medical Center of the Clalit Health Services Group. The research focuses on evaluating and refining clinical risk prediction models for cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes, using longitudinal real-world data from Clalit’s integrated healthcare system.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260729894833/en/

The collaboration is designed to explore how contemporary clinical data may support earlier risk identification and more personalized preventive care for patients at risk of chronic disease. Rather than developing a standalone prediction model, the research – led by Meir Medical Center’s Professor Pnina Rotman-Pikielny, Director, Endocrinology Department, and Dr. Liat Barzilay-Yoseph, Senior Endocrinologist and Internal Medicine Specialist, alongside Longevity AI CTO Dor Daniel and Data Scientists Gil Frenkel and Dr. Lior Roitman – examines how globally recognized clinical risk models can be recalibrated and assessed using real-world evidence from routine care settings.

"Many chronic conditions develop silently for years before symptoms appear, limiting opportunities for early intervention," said Professor Pnina Rotman-Pikielny. "Finding better ways to identify patients at elevated risk before disease progresses remains one of the most important challenges in preventive medicine. Research like this helps us evaluate how existing prediction tools perform in today's clinical environment."

Dr. Barzilay-Yoseph added: “This research collaboration reflects our commitment to responsibly evaluating innovative tools that may support earlier risk detection and more personalized preventive care. By combining clinical expertise with Clalit’s longitudinal real-world data infrastructure, we can examine how risk prediction models perform in contemporary care settings and where they may help clinicians identify patients who could benefit from earlier intervention.”

As part of the collaboration, Longevity AI and researchers from Meir Medical Center are retraining and evaluating globally recognized clinical risk prediction models, including cardiovascular risk models and Type 2 diabetes risk models, using contemporary real-world evidence from Clalit’s integrated care environment. The research draws on data from across Clalit’s hospitals, community clinics, laboratories, and unified electronic medical record systems, through OCEAN – Clalit’s Collaboration Platform – and is subject to Clalit’s privacy, governance, and research approval processes.

“With 14 hospitals, approximately 1,500 clinics, and unified electronic health records covering close to five million patients, Clalit has built one of the most comprehensive longitudinal healthcare datasets globally, creating a unique foundation for advancing research in preventive care and chronic disease management,” said Guy Leitersdorf, Founder and CEO of Longevity AI. “We are proud to collaborate with clinicians and researchers from Meir Medical Center to explore how clinical intelligence can help support earlier, more proactive care.”

About Meir Medical Center (MMC)

Meir Medical Center (MMC) is one of Israel’s leading public hospitals and part of Clalit Health Group, Israel's leading and largest healthcare organizations.

As one of Israel’s largest and most leading medical centers, Meir Medical Center is dedicated to delivering advanced, compassionate, and innovative medical care to hundreds of thousands of patients each year. Since its founding in 1956, the hospital has grown to serve a regional population of approximately one million residents in the Sharon area. The 801-bed facility is staffed by a multidisciplinary team of over 4,300 employees-including nearly 1,100 physicians and manages over 67,200 annual admissions and 208,500 emergency visits. Internationally accredited by JCI, Meir is home to world-class Centers of Excellence in orthopedics, cardiology, and respiratory medicine, and proudly serves as the official medical advisor to the Israeli National Olympic Team, reflecting its leadership in sports medicine and rehabilitation. As an academic medical center affiliated with Tel Aviv University, MMC is deeply engaged in clinical research, medical education and innovation.

Meir Innovation Center collaborates with a plethora of ecosystem partners from academia, industry and Clalit central innovation division. Together, they drive forward-thinking solutions in diagnostics, treatment, and patient care - translating scientific discoveries into real-world clinical impact and helping shape the future of medicine.

About Longevity AI

Longevity AI helps health systems, primary care networks, and clinics deliver proactive and preventive care at scale. Our clinical intelligence platform gives clinicians a single, continuously updated view of each patient so they can act earlier, prevent decline, and support longer, healthier lives. Using population-scale data and coordinated clinical models across cardiovascular, metabolic, cognitive, immune, and other systems, Longevity AI brings together clinical, behavioral, and historical signals and surfaces the most important risks and next steps directly inside the EMR. Florence, the platform’s intelligent interface, turns this intelligence into clear guidance for clinicians and simple, personalized support for patients to strengthen daily habits and follow care plans between visits. To learn more, visit www.longevity-ai.com/.

Dr. Liat Barzilay-Yoseph (left), Senior Endocrinologist and Internal Medicine Specialist, Meir Medical Center, and Professor Pnina Rotman-Pikielny (right), Director, Endocrinology Department, Meir Medical Center, are leading Meir Medical Center's participation in a joint research collaboration with Longevity AI examining how globally recognized clinical risk models can be recalibrated and assessed using real-world evidence from routine care settings. (photo credit: Meir Medical Center, Clalit Health Group)

At the MIXiii Health-Tech Conference in Jerusalem, Israel, on June 29, 2026, panelists discussed the joint research collaboration between Longevity AI and Meir Medical Center of the Clalit Health Services Group. From left: Ofri Berkman, Innovation Project Manager, Innovation Center, Meir Medical Center; Guy Leitersdorf, Founder and CEO of Longevity AI; Dr. Liat Barzilay-Yoseph, Senior Endocrinologist and Internal Medicine Specialist, Meir Medical Center; and Yifat Wand, Business Development Lead, Clalit Innovation. (photo credit: Constantin Grossman)

Guy Leitersdorf, Founder and CEO of Longevity AI. (photo credit: Roy Tahar)

STARKE, Fla. (AP) — Florida is set to become the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, planning lethal injections Tuesday for an ex-police officer convicted of a young girl's murder and an octogenarian who would be the second-oldest inmate put to death in modern U.S. history.

The planned injections come 18 months after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis began stepping up executions at a rate unseen in modern times in Florida. Not since 2017 when Arkansas carried out two death sentences on the same day has a state planned back-to-back executions.

Since the beginning of 2025, Florida has carried out nearly half of all the state executions in the U.S.

James Aren Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at noon at Florida State Prison near Starke, followed about six hours later by 80-year-old Dominick Anthony Occhicone, who also would become the oldest prisoner executed in Florida's modern history.

Duckett was convicted of raping and drowning an 11-year-old girl while working as a police officer in a small central Florida city in 1987, and Occhicone was convicted of the 1986 killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents.

They would become Florida’s 11th and 12th inmates to be executed this year.

The Florida Supreme Court denied appeals for both men last week, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied them on Tuesday.

Duckett’s attorneys had asked for another stay, claiming that Duckett is innocent and that the state’s handling of the DNA evidence is the reason for the inconclusive results. Occhicone’s attorneys argued that several age-related ailments, including kidney and prostate problems, could make his execution especially painful, constituting cruel and unusual punishment.

A Florida prison official said Tuesday morning that the department was confident in its readiness to carry out both executions.

The governor hasn’t said why he scheduled two executions on the same day.

DeSantis, who leaves office in January, oversaw a record 19 executions in 2025, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976. The previous high was eight executions set in 2014.

Florida has executed 29 people since the beginning of 2025 while the rest of the U.S. states combined have carried out 35 executions over the same time frame.

If Tuesday’s executions proceed, that would bring the total for DeSantis’ final two years in office up to 31 overall, compared to just nine executions during the first six years of his administration. Another execution is scheduled for August.

DeSantis initially signed a death warrant for Duckett in February, setting a March execution date. But the Florida Supreme Court issued a stay just days before that date to allow for DNA testing of old evidence that couldn’t be performed at the time of the original trial because of technical limitations. The results were inconclusive, meaning they did not exonerate Duckett or definitively connect him to the crime. Judges have allowed the jury verdict to stand.

When Occhicone's death warrant was signed late last month, his was the only execution scheduled for Tuesday. But after the Florida Supreme Court removed Duckett's stay on July 8, DeSantis signed a new death warrant and added Duckett to Occhicone’s execution date, which hadn't been done in Florida in more than 60 years. Florida Department of Corrections records show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past, with the last being on May 12, 1964.

Nationwide, it's not uncommon for two different states to hold executions on the same date, but it's less common for a single state to perform two. Before Arkansas executed two inmates on the same day in 2017, Texas executed two convicted killers on a single day in 2000, the year it put to death 40 prisoners.

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty has urged DeSantis to halt both executions.

“July 28 represents an unprecedented escalation of Florida’s use of the death penalty,” the group’s executive director, Grace Hanna, said in a statement. “These are two profoundly different cases, but they point to the same troubling reality: Florida continues to expand the use of capital punishment, despite mounting evidence that it is not what Floridians want.”

The governor's office has rarely commented on executions over the past 18 months. DeSantis has previously said his goal is to bring justice to victims’ families who have waited decades for sentences to be carried out.

“Some of these crimes were committed in the ’80s,” the governor said in 2025. “Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly. If I honestly thought someone was innocent, I would not pull the trigger.”

Occhicone would become Florida's oldest inmate to be executed, just weeks after two 74-year-old men briefly held that spot, the second man just a week older than the first at his time of death. Recent executions have highlighted the nation's aging death-row population and renewed questions about the humanity of administering capital punishment to inmates who might die soon from natural causes.

Occhicone also would become the second-oldest prisoner known to be executed in modern U.S. history after 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr. in Alabama in 2018. Moody was condemned for a wave of mail bombs in 1989 that killed a federal judge and wounded a Black civil rights attorney.

Florida executions are all by injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

This combo from photos provided by Florida Department of Corrections shows from left, James Aren Duckett and Dominick Anthony Occhicone. (Florida Department of Corrections via AP)

FILE - Clouds hover over the entrance of the Florida State Prison in Starke, Fla., Aug. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Curt Anderson, file)