Arrow Program

Background: 

• The Arrow Program is a unique research program for young students, initiated in 2007, at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel.
• The target of the Arrow Program is to create young and multidisciplinary research teams; a combination of motivated and exceptional students in their early years of education in medicine, biology, bioinformatics, statistics, physics, psychology and computer science.
• The designed concept of the Arrow Program is to incorporate students from the second year and forward into clinical and basic research.
• Accordingly, students are offered to participate in varying research studies, from the very beginning with formation of an idea or a query, to the presentation of the results in medical conferences.

Rationale:

• Today, with the extreme overflow of information, more and more research questions in the various fields of medicine require deep understanding of various aspects related to the clinics, therapy, epidemiology, imaging, immunology, rehabilitation and quality of symptom management.
• To face this abundance of information, the Arrow Project approach is targeted at building specialized and flexible teams, working together in order to address complicated interdisciplinary research issues.

The teams that construct the Arrow Program are accordingly aimed at:

• Basic immunologic and molecular genetic research.
• Innovative image analysis techniques mainly related to assessment of MRI using new MRI modalities, advanced software and data mining.
• Clinical aspects of epidemiology, pathology, infectious and autoimmunity diseases. 

Aim:

• The main aim of the Arrow Program is to develop a platform that will strengthen students' knowledge and practice, and train them to be better physicians and researchers.
• This target is planned to be achieved by incorporating the students in integrated clinical work involving research. Special emphasis is made to teach students issues like: Study design, Literature review, and Statistical methods.  In addition to performing laboratory work, "wetting the hands and mind" from the early steps of research work, students practice lectures, present data in scientific meetings and are taught to write scientific papers.

The Process:

• Accepted students spend at least 7 hours/week (Max of 30 hours/month) in the lab, participate in lectures and present their progress in the program's meeting.

Future plans:

• To enlarge the number of participating students, to incorporate students in additional research laboratories in Israel, and to enable them to practice research internationally by exchange programs and summer schools.

Prof. Eldad Katorza  MD, MSc, MBA

Director, Arrow Program

Director, Gertner Institute

Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Hashomer