Six cutting-edge projects are in the running for the prestigious €10,000 European Health Award 2013, sponsored by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health and FOPI, which brings together Austria's research-based pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The winner will be chosen by a panel of leading health experts, and announced during the 16th EHFG conference, being held in the Gastein Valley from the 2nd to 4th October.
No computer works as efficiently as the human brain - so much so that building an artificial brain is the goal of many scientists. Neuroinformatics researchers from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich have now made a breakthrough in this direction by understanding how to configure so-called neuromorphic chips to imitate the brain's information processing abilities in real-time.
Scientists have developed an "intelligent knife" that can tell surgeons immediately whether the tissue they are cutting is cancerous or not. In the first study to test the invention in the operating theatre, the "iKnife" diagnosed tissue samples from 91 patients with 100 per cent accuracy, instantly providing information that normally takes up to half an hour to reveal using laboratory tests.
The European Commission has proposed a follow up to the Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme (AAL JP) for 2014 - 2020, to continue the success of the present programme in applied research for ageing well with ICT. The aim of the AAL JP is to support industry, in particular SME to bring digital innovative products and services for ageing well to the European market. Alignment with the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP AHA) could further boost deployment at European scale.
The GRANATUM web portal is now online, ready to connect biomedical researchers. The public GRANATUM IT platform provides access to information about cancer research and established pharmaceutical agents from 83 global data sources in an integrated, semantically interlinked manner.
The Strategic Intelligence Monitor on Personal Health Systems (SIMPHS) research started in 2009 with the analysis of the market for Remote Patient Monitoring and Treatment (RMT) within Personal Health Systems (PHS) from a supply side perspective. The objective was to assess the RMT market current size and future growth perspectives, provide an understanding of the market structure, innovation dynamics, types of market players involved and strategies followed, and ultimately identify market drivers and barriers as well as areas for policy action.
Some 165 million Europeans are likely to experience some form of brain-related disease during their life. As the population ages, Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative or age-related mental disorders are affecting more people and contributing to higher health costs.