Israel now hosts 656 medical device companies. Consider also that 35 are publicly traded and 18 can cite foreign company ownership, according to statistics cited by the International Business Times. Combined, they generated $1.83 billion of the medical device industry's $322 billion in revenue during 2011, a relatively small number. But the country is first in the world for total number of patents in the medical devices sector, the article explains, and the sector's growth in Israel is accelerating. Story