Six institutions from Canada, the Czech Republic, Austria, France and Italy have now become official partners of the Infrafrontier consortium. With the participation of Canada, the consortium will be extended beyond Europe. The aim is to create a multinational research infrastructure for the phenotyping and archiving of mouse models of human diseases.

The STEP VPH Research roadmap suggested the possibility to establish a European Institute entirely dedicated to the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH). This initiative has been re- proposed and expanded in the recent "Vision & Strategy" document of the VPH NoE, and has recently been exposed to the judgement of the community at large through the launch of a petition.

The following project currently active in the Seventh Framework program of the European Community for research area and to innovation (2007-2013) requires the participation of a new partner to carry out certain tasks within the project. Please note that the Seventh Framework program offers part-funding not full-funding of research activities.

A new £44 million IT system which will pave the way for a paper-free NHS was launched. The Patient Management System (PMS) will be used to streamline in-patient and out-patient bookings, manage waiting lists, order tests and report test results.

Novoseek, the free biomedical search engine developed by the bioinformatics company Bioalma, has been incorporated to electronic information resources available at the Spanish Council of Scientific Research (CSIC).

The International Council of Nurses (ICN) and the International Healthcare Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO) announced a collaborative agreement to advance terminology harmonization and foster interoperability in health information systems.

The European Commission (EC) has been supporting eHealth research and development (R&D) through Framework Programmes (FP) for over 20 years now and contributed to the emergence of new generations of technologies in several fields of healthcare. With the support of the Member States, industries and users it has elaborated a strategy of deployment of these technologies to ensure ever improving and sustainable health services.