A proven leader in healthcare administration and international health cooperation, Asher Salmon, MD, PhD, Director of the International Affairs Division at Israel’s Ministry of Health, has made significant contributions to the development of Israel’s healthcare system and has represented Israel on the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Bureau of the OECD Health Committee. In this interview to Business Partners, he shares his insights on the key challenges facing healthcare and on leveraging strategic partnerships to drive mutual benefits in healthcare innovation.
Speaking at HealthWorld 2026, you outlined four major challenges putting pressure on healthcare systems today. Taken together, do these signal the need for a complete structural overhaul or can they be addressed through incremental reform?
The four challenges at hand are the rising costs of medical technology, growing waiting times and hospital occupancy, geographical inequalities in access, and a shrinking and increasingly exhausted healthcare workforce. Addressing these requires a broad and strategic redesign; however, full structural change is not strictly required, as it relies on longterm, complicated, and political support, making it unlikely. The current system works well, so we can handle the challenges within it by taking specific approaches:
To manage technology costs, we must improve the evaluation and selection of new technologies. Traditionally, additions to the healthcare basket have predominantly focused on pharmaceuticals, while other technologies have been included to a lesser extent.
To reduce waiting times and occupancy, we need to create strong incentives and continue auditing identified priority fields—Israel has identified eight such fields, including orthopedics, ophthalmology, and neurology. Additionally, identifying waiting times for MRIs and implementing a national referral system will improve overall efficiency.
Mitigating geographical inequalities, however, is more complicated. Solutions include encouraging young physicians to work in their local communities, implementing higher capitation weighting, and ensuring government investment in the periphery.
Finally, to tackle workforce burnout, we must expand medical student places, add new positions, and create new professional roles such as physician assistants and specialized nursing. Moreover, we must further develop electronic tools and AI solutions.
Countries must face up to the reality that innovation demands substantial investment
As medical innovation accelerates rapidly, driving up cost burdens, how can healthcare systems reconcile faster access to innovation with longterm financial sustainability?
Integrating innovation costs a lot, and these investments are very longterm; we will not see immediate financial savings, but rather longterm improvements in clinical results. Countries must face up to the reality that innovation demands substantial investment. To reconcile access with sustainability, systems need professional mechanisms that establish evidence-based priorities and evaluate key performance indicators (KPIs), including cost-effectiveness and safety.
In your opinion, what is the best way to address uneven healthcare access between urban centers and peripheral regions?
Addressing these inequalities comes down to culture and workforce deployment. In smaller countries, accessing specialized care naturally requires patients to travel to central hubs. For example, in Israel, the policy is not to open small hospitals in the periphery, but rather to create super-hospitals. Indicative of this policy is that just two new super-hospitals are planned to open in the coming decade, serving Israel’s northern and southern periphery.
Workforce shortages and burnout are a global structural challenge for the sector. Beyond simply increasing recruitment, what needs to change in the way we educate, deploy, and support healthcare professionals?
Addressing workforce shortages and burnout requires changes that go beyond expanding medical student places and adding new positions. It requires action in three key areas: education and training, deployment and role creation, and technology and workplace support.
We must reform education and training to facilitate knowledge transfer and build expertise directly among young healthcare providers. Training programs should incorporate focused instruction on innovation and new technologies, equipping the upcoming generation with the practical skills required to effectively develop and integrate new clinical tools.
Systemic deployment must also adapt by establishing new health-related professional roles. Introducing these new professions helps offload standard routine workloads from traditional roles, allowing clinicians to focus on specialized patient care. Additionally, deployment policies should incentivize young physicians to serve in local peripheral communities to reduce regional coverage disparities.
Crucially, to directly alleviate clinician exhaustion, the market must develop and integrate electronic workflows and AI tools. Implementing these digital tools reduces administrative burden and creates a more supportive, operationally efficient environment for healthcare staff.
Given Israel’s standing as a healthtech powerhouse, how can Greece and Israel leverage their respective healthtech ecosystems to deepen knowledge sharing and drive life sciences and healthcare innovation?
Greece has a great, newly developing ecosystem that supports cooperation and the innovation of research within academic hospitals and universities. Cooperation in clinical fields would benefit both countries, such as by applying together for EU Horizon grants, as these potential joint projects could bring in a substantial amount of funding. At the same time, the two countries should develop mutual projects in precision medicine, genomic medicine, digital tools, AI integration, public health prevention, and healthy lifestyles.
Where do you see the greatest potential for cross-sector networks such as AmCham Greece to contribute to better outcomes and stronger international cooperation in healthcare?
Stronger cooperation between AmCham Greece and AmCham Israel could create a trilateral working framework with the United States. While this would require extra funding, it could lead to better health outcomes for all and foster a stronger ecosystem for developing technologies on a global level.
Looking to 2030, what should governments be prioritizing today in order to build healthcare systems that are resilient, innovative, effective, and sustainable?
To achieve these goals, governments must prioritize certain fiscal and operational imperatives. Namely, they must adjust national budgets to achieve greater efficiency, specifically by elevating the percentage of public healthcare expenditure to match the average of EU countries. They must also train the upcoming generation in both medicine and nursing (as both countries currently face a lack of nurses), as well as create new health-related professions to reduce standard routine workloads from traditional professions. Finally, they must reform education and training to facilitate knowledge and expertise among young health providers, alongside fostering innovation to promote skills in developing and incorporating new technologies.
