Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) announced the launch of the Philips Livable Cities Award, an initiative designed to generate practical, achievable ideas for improving the health and well-being of people living in cities. Individuals, community or non-governmental groups and businesses are eligible to participate in the Award program that comprises a total prize fund amounting to 125,000 Euros.

Research from a global survey by BridgeHead Software, the Healthcare Storage Virtualization (HSV) company, has revealed that medical images, scanned documents, email and advances towards the Electronic Patient Record are the likely causes for the upsurge in healthcare data that is already challenging hospitals and set to grow further in the foreseeable future.

Since July 2009 Transinsight GmbH and antibodies-online GmbH partner together with TU Dresden and RESprotect GmbH to develop and deploy new semantic search technologies for the Life-Science industry.

After a lengthy evaluation process, the prestigious Mater Private Hospital in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, has signed a multi-year contract with Carestream Health for the provision of a comprehensive digital radiology solution. Installation will commence mid 2010 and proceed in phases with completion scheduled for the end of the year.

Patient safety is a mission critical business goal for First DataBank, the UK's leading provider of drug databases and active clinical decision support. To highlight its vision of a world free of medication errors, First DataBank is again sponsoring the 'best use of IT to promote patient safety' category of the E-Health Insider Awards in association with BT.

CSAM, the Norwegian based specialist developers of interoperable clinical software solutions, has targeted the UK healthcare market at a critical time. With budgets under pressure and NHS Trusts tackling a number of UK Government policy initiatives, the CSAM solutions have been designed to specifically deliver against the current shift in NHS strategies to 'connect all, not replace all'.

Already with a significant presence, Sentient Health plans to extend its reach across the UK healthcare market helping more NHS trusts and other healthcare providers to tackle Government policy initiatives such as the Department of Health's quality, innovation, productivity and prevention (QIPP) agenda and the Operational Efficiency Programme.