Royal Philips Electronics announced its intent for capital allocation following the divestment of an 80.1% majority share in its Semiconductor unit. The transaction, announced separately today, values this business at around EUR 8.3 billion.

IBM announced a major step in the drive toward a national electronic medical records system by contributing software technology that supports the exchange of healthcare information to the open source community.

Agfa HealthCare announces that its Heartlab cardiovascular solution for cardiology image and information management, received the top rating for Cardiology PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems) in the KLAS Mid-Year Report (June 2006, www.healthcomputing.com).

Telbios, the leading telemedicine services provider in Italy, has signed an exclusivity agreement with Aerotel Medical System, world leader in manufacturing of medical devices and software platforms for telemedicine and Home Care services, for exclusive marketing and distribution of Aerotel innovative products in the Italian market.

Leading global brand consultancy, Interbrand, has again teamed up with BusinessWeek to publish their annual ranking of the Best Global Brands by brand value. Now in its sixth year, the Best Global Brands report identifies the top 100 global brands that have managed to create and sustain strong performance in today's competitive market.

Barriers still remain to the full participation of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the framework programme (FP) in general and the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme in particular, according to a new policy paper by EFPConsulting and Empirica.

In autumn 2003 a Swedish county council introduced TietoEnator's mobile platform Instant Choice Response (ICR) for sending reminders regarding dental appointments by text message. A year later the number of missed appointments had already fallen by 16 percent. A number that is continuing to fall each month, explains Sven-Olof Andersson, financial manager at Folktandvården (the Swedish public dental care service) in Sörmland.