New York City-based start-up trying to use platform to send medical help overseas
NEW YORK -- A New York City-based start-up company is using its platform to try to get much-needed help overseas.
Seeing the horrifying images out of the Middle East has been incredibly difficult for Ariel Katz, who used to live in Israel.
"I'm not physically there, but I'm definitely emotionally there right now, so I wanted to help with both sides," he said.
He felt he was in a unique position to help with his company, H1.
"We profile every doctor in the world and tell you everything you wanna know about them," he said. "You can come in and type in ... 'trauma brain.' It's gonna pull up every doctor around the world that does brain trauma."
With this information at his fingertips, he blasted out this message to United States doctors: "We're compiling a list of doctors, nurses, physician's assistants that want to fly and help with the crisis that's going on."
He says hundreds responded, including Danbury Hospital surgeon Dr. Simon Eiref.
"I can think back to what it was like in 9/11 on that day, and I can understand how terrified people are," he said. "I'm sure I'm just gonna be playing a tiny role, but I think it's important that the whole world helps out."
Once Katz knew he had doctors on board, he started reaching out overseas.
"On the Israeli side, there are hospitals that have shortages of staff now. A lot of them are sent to the reserves. They're being sent to the war, and so they have shortages. So we just contacted every Israeli hospital. We have information about every Israeli doctor, so we just contacted them. We said, hey, we have all these volunteers, we have funds to fly them over, what are your needs?" Katz said.
Getting into Gaza is the challenge, but he's working with nonprofits to effort help to the Palestinians, too.
"Our mission's to connect the world to the right doctor," Katz said.
And they hope to do just that.
- Related story: New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin: "We've been dealing with a rise in bias activity"
Katz says they're working on flights and hope to get the first group of doctors out this week.
Medical professionals who want to volunteer with H1 can do so by clicking here.
The categories of doctors H1 is recruiting are:
- Category 1: Doctors who are licensed to work both in the U.S. and Israel, can speak Hebrew and are a citizen of Israel.
- Category 2: U.S. doctors who are certified to work in Israel and have a hospital placement for them to go there.
- Category 3: U.S. doctors who still need to secure a placement and need to get an emergency authorization (usually within 24 hours) from the Israel Ministry of Health that has two confirmed urgent needs - forensic pathologists and trauma surgeons for the hospitals up north.
- Category 4: Doctors who want to help Palestinians - H1 can route them to international organizations and help coordinate efforts.