Israeli AI start-up Mitziti supports PTSD victims with new technology

The after-effects of the October 7 massacre led to one of the most significant mental health crises in Israel's history. The scope of the population exposed to the event and the experiences of the soldiers on the battlefield both contribute to the ongoing trauma. Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of PTSD victims will be added to the Israeli welfare system.

A new Israeli start-up called Mitziti has launched an artificial intelligence program to ease the bureaucratic process for trauma victims. The College of Management Academic Studies in Rishon Lezion, under which the project was developed, is part of a unique master's program at the College's School of Design and Innovation.

Limor Haim Matitiyo, a member of the project's founding team and a master's degree student at the College of Management, shared, "It started when I first met my partner, a post-traumatic victim himself. It took six years for the health system to recognize the 40% disability he suffers from. I was horrified by the ambiguity of the system. Long before the war, in July 2023, when two PTSD patients  committed suicide because of the irresponsible procrastination of the system, we decided we had to put an end to it."

The establishment team for the project includes two officers who serve in the army and a commander of an active reserve division. Haim Matityahu added, "When the war started, our project took on new importance. Despite the challenges associated with serving in significant and demanding positions in the army, we felt it was our duty to complete the project."

"In essence, it is a digital platform that accompanies the victim in combination with artificial intelligence," says Maj. Eyal Dichter, the co-founder of the project. "There are many associations that provide assistance to the victims. However, some of them are manual, at best semi-automatic, and can disconnect from each other which makes it difficult to concentrate the goal to just one place."

A brighter future developing for Israeli trauma victims

According to Dichter, Mitziti will provide a voice assistant that will ask the victim in the morning how his day is going, and remind him of various meetings and documents that he needs to sign or send, among other helpful tools. "If at first the victim was unable to sleep five days a week and is now in the process of improving and had only three challenging nights, the system will know how to flood the positive process that the victim is going through. It is a system that studies the user without compromising privacy," he added.

At the launch event, Mitziti won the judges' "favorite" award. Maj. Dichter commented on the achievement by stating, "We have already been contacted by a number of international organizations that are interested in investing in Israel following the war. These organizations believe that our project will provide a solution to the hundreds of thousands of Israeli trauma victims that will unfortunately only increase in the coming years.

In the establishment team, three out of five are intimately familiar with the topic of post-trauma, which allowed us to characterize the scope of the problem in a very precise way. Mitziti seeks to provide a technological solution for mental disability with the aim of facilitating the process that victims of post-trauma often cannot contain."