A groundbreaking computerised simulator currently being tested at hospitals in France will enable trained and trainee orthopaedic surgeons to sharpen their skills without having to actually do so on patients during "live" operations.

Developed by an interdisciplinary team of experts through a project called Technology Enhanced Learning for Orthopaedic Surgery (TELEOS), the simulator softens the boundaries between theory and practice, taking vocational training into a new dimension.

Public and private investment in information and communication technology (ICT) is bearing fruit, finds the Commission's annual progress report on i2010 – the digitally-led strategy for growth and jobs. Technology is fuelling innovation and productivity, and there are signs of fundamental change in markets and user behaviour, as Europe moves towards a knowledge-based economy.

Computer-based therapy for milder, but more common mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety should be made available to any patients in England who could benefit from it from April, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said today.

The German Government has unveiled a new EUR 5.5 billion programme aimed at further strengthening the country's position in the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector.

The ICT sector in Germany has gone from strength to strength in recent years, triggering notable innovations. In the second half of the1990s, ICT investments accounted for 18% of the country's overall economic growth.

As the deadlines for the first calls for project proposals under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) approach, the new Electronic Proposal Submission Service (EPSS) has been launched to facilitate submitting proposals online.

The EPSS allows users to propose projects by creating their proposal completely online without having to download or save anything locally on their own personal computer.

Germany's top supercomputing centres have signed a Memorandum of Understanding which brings them together to form Europe's most powerful computing network, the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS).

The German Government, which has allocated funding of €30 million to the project, hopes the initiative will raise the visibility of the centres involved and improve their chances of playing a key role in the establishment of a European high-performance computer network.

A multi-million pound visionary medical project that will recruit 500,000 people across Britain to help find out much more about curing many life threatening and debilitating diseases gets underway in Manchester. UK Biobank will recruit people aged 40-69 and track their health over the course of the next 30 years or more.