Decades of global stigma over electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), a potentially life-saving treatment that helps thousands of patients with illnesses like severe depression, could soon be overcome as a result of a first of its kind mobile app developed within the NHS.

In experiments involving a simulation of the human esophagus and stomach, researchers at MIT, the University of Sheffield, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have demonstrated a tiny origami robot that can unfold itself from a swallowed capsule and, steered by external magnetic fields, crawl across the stomach wall to remove a swallowed button battery or patch a wound.

A team of experts from around Europe has come together to develop a portable device with a hand-held probe that will dramatically reduce invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in the treatment of thyroid nodules, saving approximately €450 million Euros every year.

MyHealthAvatar, a research project funded by the EU with aim to proof the concept of the digital representation of your health status, has launched the Android App on Google Play. Your health status could be designed as a lifetime companion (Avatar). Your Health Avatar will facilitate the collection of, and access to, long-term health-status information.

Healthcast, a Luxembourg eHealth startup, will present its solution to the Zika crisis at the Health 2.0 conference in Barcelona on 12th May. Healthcast empowers individuals to give best-practice care at home when a loved one is ill.

Most people in the developing world who have asthma, cystic fibrosis or other chronic lung diseases have no way to measure how well their lungs are functioning outside of a clinic or doctor visit. But many do have access to a phone, though it may be a 10-year-old flip phone or a communal village landline instead of the latest app-driven smartphone.

"There's an app for that." The phrase is so ubiquitous it's a meme, and trademarked by Apple Inc. In fact there are more than 165,000 mobile applications available for health care, with the largest category for people with mental-health disorders, managing everything from addiction to depression and schizophrenia.