The Alliance for MRI welcomes the European Commission's announcement that it will postpone and amend legislation which would pose a serious threat to the use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in patient welfare and scientific research. The EU Physical Agents Directive 2004/40/EC (EMF) is to be delayed by four years until 30th April 2012 to allow time for a substantive amendment to be adopted.

Fostering good health in an ageing population, protecting citizens from health threats and supporting dynamic health systems and new technologies are the objectives of the new health strategy adopted by the European Commission on 23 October. The White Paper, entitled "Together for Health - A Strategic Approach for the EU, 2008-2013", sets out a framework to respond to a wide range of health challenges in a comprehensive and coherent way.

MEDEA+, the EUREKA pan-European Programme for advanced co-operative Research and Development in Microelectronics, today announced details of the new EUREKA programme called CATRENE (Cluster for Application and Technology Research in Europe on NanoElectronics) that will take up the challenge of increasing Europe's strength in micro- and nanoelectronics after the highly successful MEDEA+ programme reaches its conclusion in 2008.

Discussing the best ways to measure human feelings and emotions is the aim of a new European expert platform. Results of the platform FEEL EUROPE will help to create the basis for novel research topics, technologies, cooperation and innovations across various applications and industrial branches, believe participants in a new EU-funded project.

The European Commission, together with seven European organisations: EUROREC, COCIR, EHTEL, HINE, CPME, EHMA and HOPE and 2 international organisations WHO and HIMSS are co-organising the second World of Health IT conference in Vienna 22-25 October, 2007. The first edition took place in Geneva in 2006 and demonstrated the great interest and need for such a market place where all the professionals in the domain can meet to learn from each other and find the most appropriate solutions at the largest exhibition dedicated to eHealth in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

The ISO-HL7 PHR International Survey team invites to participate in a survey of the international uses of Personal Health Records and Personal Health Informatics. The goal of this survey is to inform and update the standards-development community of the current needs, desires, and trends surrounding the electronic Personal Health Record (PHR).

Transinsight, provider of knowledge-based software solutions, has released a new online version of the well-known life-science search engine GoPubMed. This, the first semantic search engine, reduces search time by up to 90%. By sorting search results it enables scientists to answer biomedical questions in completely new way.