The EU-funded CHIC project (Computational Horizons In Cancer: Developing Meta- and Hyper-Multiscale Models and Repositories for In Silico Oncology) proposes the development of clinical trial driven tools, services and secure infrastructure that will support the creation of multiscale cancer hypermodels (integrative models). The latter are defined as choreographies of component models, each one describing a biological process at a characteristic spatiotemporal scale, and of relation models/metamodels defining the relations across scales.

Individual cells within a tumor are not all the same. This may sound like a modern medical truism, but it wasn't very long ago that oncologists assumed that taking a single biopsy from a patient's tumor would be an accurate reflection of the physiological and genetic make-up of the entire mass. Researchers have come to realize that cancer is a disease driven by the same "survival of the fitter" forces that Darwin proposed drove the evolution of life on Earth.

Across society, from health to agriculture and transport, from energy to climate change and security, practitioners in every discipline recognise the potential of the enormous amounts of data being created every day. The challenge is to capture, manage and process that information to derive meaningful results and make a difference to people's lives. The Big Data Europe project has just released the first public version of its open source platform designed to do just that.

Children with asthma will soon be able to breathe easier thanks to an interactive app created by a University of Manchester spin-out company. The Rafi-tone app, available on i-Phone and Android devices, helps children accept their mask and engage with taking medication by involving them in an onscreen fun animated game.

Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have demonstrated a method for making three-dimensional images of structures in biological material under natural conditions at a much higher resolution than other existing methods. The method may help shed light on how cells communicate with one another and provide important insights for engineers working to develop artificial organs such as skin or heart tissue.

The combination of augmented reality technology, geocaching, and other novel techniques to create innovative active video games (AVGs) has potential personal and public health implications, as discussed in the Editorial "Pokémon Go, Go, Go, Gone?" published in Games for Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia and the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Switzerland have created a microneedle drug monitoring system that could one day replace costly, invasive blood draws and improve patient comfort. The new system consists of a small, thin patch that is pressed against a patient's arm during medical treatment and measures drugs in their bloodstream painlessly without drawing any blood.