ePractice.eu portal announced that the Lithuanian eHealth Strategy Project for 2007-2015 has just been approved by the eHealth Development Coordination Board, meeting at the Ministry of Health.

The eHealth Strategy Project aims to improve healthcare services by maintaining the quality and continuity of patient-orientated services, using information and communication technologies.

Proposals Submission Deadline: September 15, 2007
Full Chapters Due: January 15, 2008

A book edited by: Roland Staudinger, Herwig Ostermann, Bettina Staudinger
Institute of Medical Law, Human Resources and Health Politics
University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Hall/Tyrol, Austria

Portugal hopes to stimulate initiatives in three key areas during its stint in the EU's Presidency seat: publishing and scientific information; nanosciences and nanotechnologies; reform and modernisation of universities.

Setting the scene for its Presidency, the Portuguese Government states: "We know that globally, the European Union has not yet reached the goal of 1% public investment in R&D, or the 2% of private investment in R&D.

The third successive European eGovernment Awards, organised by the European Commission, have this year received 311 cases from 32 of the 34 eligible European countries.

Together with the forthcoming Ministerial eGovernment Conference in Lisbon (PT), the Awards revolve around four main themes relating to ICT: "Better public services for growth and jobs"; "Participation and transparency"; "Social impact and cohesion" and "Effective and efficient administration".

SOPRANO stands for "Service-oriented Programmable Smart Environments for Older Europeans" and is an Integrated Project in the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme (IST Priority 6th Call on Ambient Assisted Living -AAL). The SOPRANO project is to develop affordable, smart ICT-based assisted living services with interfaces which are easy to use for older people and familiar in their home environment.

The Commission launched a public consultation to help strengthen the global position of Europe's Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industries by ensuring access to global markets. The consultation will run until 17 September 2007 and is open to all stakeholders, including industries, research community and consumer organisations. The Commission seeks to capture stakeholder views on market access and on regulatory issues so as to refine its EU strategy for international cooperation on ICT.

The eGovernment Observatory, the Good Practice Framework and the European eGovernement Awards have joined forces to serve the eGovernment community with a single face. All initiatives have indeed been fully merged on the new eGovernment Practice portal ePractice.eu which now provides the most complete information on eGovernment in Europe (27 Member States, EU candidate countries and EFTA countries), as well as a broad range of exchange opportunities, both on- and off-line.