The EU's app sector has gone from zero to digital superhero in less than five years. By 2018 it could employ 4.8 million people and contribute €63 billion to the EU economy according to a report presented in Brussels. The study, carried out by GIGAOM and NUI Galway for the European Commission, shows that Europe's app developers are up to the challenge of taking the global lead. Currently, EU and North American developers generate the same levels (42% each) of app revenues in crucial EU and US markets.

A new platform launched by the European Commission will improve the safety of patients that undergo medical treatment involving blood and blood products. National health authorities can use the web-based Rapid Alert system for Blood and Blood Components (RAB) that allows them to exchange information so that cross-border incidents are prevented or contained and immediate measures can be taken to ensure the safety of patients.

A remarkable number of results have been generated by research and innovation projects in the domains of eHealth, Active Ageing and Independent Living. HAIVISIO project aims at helping those projects to set a common strategy for joint dissemination and exploitation activities, through the organization of events and training courses and the facilitation of an online community.

The new type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan could improve care for a type of cancer called myeloma and reduce reliance on bone marrow biopsies, which can be painful for patients and often fail to show doctors how far the disease has spread. The research was published in the journal Radiology and was carried out by researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. It received funding from Cancer Research UK and the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Facility in Imaging, with additional funding from the EPSRC.

More and more people in Switzerland are using the internet. "Switzerland ranks amongst the top countries in terms of internet penetration", says Prof. Michael Latzer from the Media Change & Innovation Division in the IPMZ at the University of Zurich. Together with his team, he has carried out the "World Internet Project - Switzerland" for the second time since 2011.

Publicity surrounding the implementation of patient decision support interventions (DESIs) traditionally focuses on two areas of improvement: helping patients make better decisions AND lowering health care spending. The use of patient decision support interventions as a means to generate health care savings has been widely advocated, but the extent and quality of evidence is unclear.

Medical diagnostics is searching for substances capable of documenting early on whether a serious disease is developing or what its course will be. In many cases, the treacherous molecules are present only in trace amounts - which is why extremely sensitive methods of detection are urgently needed. Now, researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), along with scientists from Potsdam and Berlin, have come up with a new method of detection, which has allowed them to notice the presence of only 17 dye molecules.