Today was a successful day on TASE and I went to Arik, my investment adviser, to ask him what to do. He said TASE was higher than ever and it is expected that during the next week there will be a period of profit taking. So holding cash is the best and wait for an entry point next week. (Bank HaPoalim has published a different advice: They say that TASE's upward momentum should be exploited and all the money should be invested in shares). Anyway, I am searching for investment opportunities and found this NESS very successful startup. Reading what it is about, I am surprised - in the eighties I had a close contact with this technology, when it was only a miserable office in an old decaying building in Tel Aviv, and did not think it had any future. Am I totally blind to commercial opportunity? Am I so dumb? How can I manage my money affairs if I am so dumb?
The story is like this. In 1981 don Patricio Romero, the governor of Ecuador's Pichincha province, and his second in charge whose name I forgot, were invited by TAHAL to visit Israel. I was assigned to be with them, I received a chauffered car and a lot of spending money, and we went around the usual religious and turistic attractions as well as irrigation and intensive agriculture and agroindustry plants. Romero was a rather short man, very nicely built, with penetrating, sick, hypnotic blue eyes. He was the most charismatic speaker I ever met, he never looked a person in the eye but his eyes froze and became blue green balls of crystal and he spoke with intense emotion and painful honesty. I was much impressed by him and I liked him. Later I visited him and his second in their homes in Quito, very nice upper middle class people. The Vicepresidente had a slim daughter with a long black floating hair. His home had a staircase and the teenager girl was coming down and up half dressed showing herself all along my visit. She disturbed me at the time, I had an erection then and there. There was a cascade and a fishpond in the living room. It is interesting how memory works, what are the things that get stucked forever.
What I am coming to is that being in Israel, Romero mentioned that he had some kind of muscle or back ache problem, and someone from TAHAL recommended a novel electromuscular treatment. Doctor Patricio Romero (he was a lawyer and died a year ago) agreed and I found the Romanian doctor's "clinic" in Tel Aviv. It was a modest office, he made Romero lay down and connected his skin to small crocodile electrodes. The electricity caused small muscle contractions and after playing half an hour he said that that was it. Romero felt nothing, not worse nor better, I saw nothing special. Privately (and probably also to Romero) I voiced my opinion that it was a witch doctor, I don't believe in the treatment, of course small electric stimulation will move the muscles, that was proved by Volta with his battery and dead frog legs two hundred years ago, and so on.
Now there is a startup company - and a very successful one - based exactly on the same technology. Probably it is a development of the same Romanian then new immigrant doctor. Everything written in the Ness company website and prospectus, is what I heard 25 years ago from that doctor. Which made no impression on me. Ouugh!
NESS - Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation Systems Ltd - (Teuza's holdings 34%) - NESS brings to the market a revolution in rehabilitation technology. It provides technological solutions that respond to the needs of people suffering from paralysis due to neurological disorders such as stroke, spinal cord and/or head injury, and in some other neurological indications including cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis. Experts expect that the Company's products will become a standard of care in the rehabilitation field within a few years.
The company uses the technology of surface functional electrical stimulation (FES) to develop solutions for activating paralyzed muscles. The NESS systems are designed for home use and provide the potential of enhanced function and therapeutically based improvement. The company's first product, the Handmaster, is a non-invasive system for paralyzed hands. The Handmaster system received the CE mark & approved by the FDA for marketing in the U.S.A. The Handmaster personal system incorporates and integrates advanced upper limb rehabilitation technologies in a single system for patients' independent use. NESS has applied this successful rehabilitation concept in other body sites, to offer a full range of products for a comprehensive treatment of the paralyzed body. Two of the company shareholders are a multi-national company, J&J as well as Dow Chemicals.
NESS has a subsidiary in The Netherlands and is selling its products
very successfully there. In April 2004 N.E.S.S. signed an agreement with Alfred Mann's group. According to the agreement a joint marketing company was established in The USA (BIONESS Inc.), N.E.S.S. received 35% in BIONESS Inc. and Alfred Mann provided this company a finance of $8M. BIONESS' sales in 2005 reached $2M. Bioness received also all the rights to market in the rehab area the "Bions" developed by Al Mann Foundation
Alfred E. Mann's group develops unique technologies in the medical field like: hearing device for the deaf, seeing devices for blind and also the bionic technology which provides an electric stimulation in the muscle to assist in the recovery of the function of a paralyzed limb. The combination of Ness's products and the Bions of the Alfred E. Mann's Group will make a revolution in the rehabilitation field. NESS also finished two new R&D projects, Leg Device and Large Handmaster, at a total budget of $6.3M. These projects were financed partly by Bioness and the Office of the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Israel. The leg device, NESS L300, received the CE mark & approved by the FDA for marketing in the U.S.A. The NESS L300 is intended to provide ankle dorsiflexion in individuals with drop foot following an upper motor neuron injury or disease. Website: www.nessltd.com
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