Israel’s role as a leader in the research and development of medical cannabis products was given another boost last week when Israeli-Canadian cannabis startup SciCann Therapeutics entered into a strategic partnership with Global Cannabis Applications Corp. (GCAC) of Vancouver, Canada.

SciCann will develop the drugs while GCAC will qualify trial candidates and analyze the resulting data using a variety of clinical research tools, including artificial intelligence and blockchain.

Last month, IBM proposed using blockchain cryptocurrency to track cannabis sales, which today are conducted nearly entirely in cash because most medical cannabis dispensaries in the United States and Europe cannot secure bank accounts or accept credit cards.

SciCann develops cannabis-based therapeutic products for oncology, pain management, neurogenerative diseases and inflammatory disorders. The company is headed by Zohar Koren, who cofounded a previous medical cannabis company, Cannabics Pharmaceuticals, in 2012.

“By combining our scientific research and clinical data with GCAC technologies, we can deliver superior data outputs that can be used to provide better medical cannabis products for patients around the world,” Koren said. “The synergistic value and impact of combining our data and clinical research tools together with GCAC’s artificial intelligence and blockchain environment is enormous.”

In other medical cannabis news this week, iCAN-Israel Cannabis teamed with Aura Medical to deliver its coming iCAN.sleep insomnia formulation via Aura’s Nebican inhalation platform.

Nebican is used as a delivery mechanism for prescription medications for pulmonary conditions. iCAN.sleep will be the first cannabis-based treatment to be “atomized” by the Nebican.

iCAN.sleep with Nebican is expected to launch in California in mid-2018 with the Canadian market to follow.

“This is a game changer, taking an advanced pulmonary FDA-approved delivery platform and formulating a sleep product to deliver safe cannabis in a doseable and repeatable way,” said iCAN-Israel Cannabis founder and CEO Saul Kaye.