At 18-19 April 2007 eHealth Conference, representatives of European Union Member States and members of the European Economic Area adopted a common Declaration. The representatives agreed to pursue close interaction and collaboration in the area of cross-border electronic health services throughout Europe. The representatives agreed to pursue close interaction and collaboration in the area of cross-border electronic health services throughout Europe.

European researchers will soon have access to a world-class high performance computing infrastructure, thanks to the new Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PACE) initiative.

PACE brings together the supercomputing centres of 15 European countries, with the goal of strengthening European science, engineering and supercomputer technologies. At a ceremony in Berlin on 17 April, the partners signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the new initiative.

Running shoes, ski bindings and foot prostheses all have one thing in common: They must be tested thoroughly. This is now done by a robot-based 3-D test rig which simulates human movements, thus enabling any kind of load test to be carried out under realistic conditions.

As approximately 1.9 million elderly people in Europe experience a form of dementia. A pan-European research project is seeking to help them 'navigate their day' and improve their quality of life.

The recently launched CogKnow project, funded under the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), aims to help people to remember, maintain social contact, perform daily life activities and enhance their feelings of safety.

Health-e-Child: an integrated e-healthcare platform for European paediatrics

Healthcare processes and models will progressively require coordinated European e-health solutions in order to cope with demographic changes, current demands, future crises and growth in expectations.

Currently, the European Microsoft Innovation Center (EMIC) is starting the project EMERGE, supporting elderly people with innovative emergency monitoring and prevention.

Delayed calls of emergency medical services - in case of physical or mental disorders resulting from strokes or falls, for example - lead to increased hospitalization and movement of elderly people into nursing homes.

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.