A European consortium has received a EUR 2.8 million grant from the European Commission to develop a camera that can be ingested to obtain images of the digestive tract.

With the launch of the new Seventh Framework Programme for research and development (FP7), a revamped Partners Service addresses the specific needs of potential participants and other users of CORDIS, the Community Research and Development Information Service.

IWARD targets mainly hospitals and healthcare centres to overcome the shortages of healthcare staff - a major issue in European healthcare. Our aging society and economic pressure increase the patients-to-medics' ratio, having an adverse effect on healthcare quality and performance. Not being able to attend all patients at the right time and not keeping the hospitals clean enough (e.g. MRSA Transmission) also increases recovery time and cost.

Germany took the opportunity to look back at its impressive performance in the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) as it held a national launch event for FP7 in Bonn on 15 and 16 January.

Germany is ranked first among all participating countries for FP6. The latest available statistics from the European Commission show 7,449 German participations in 3,027 FP6 contracts, with a total EU contribution to German participants of around €2.3 billion.

A new study on the economic impact of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) on the European information and communication technologies (ICT) sector has found that it could increase Europe's competitiveness.

The Commission is launching ERAWATCH, a new online information platform on research systems and policies within the European Union. ERAWATCH supports the ongoing construction of the European Research Area (ERA) by providing policy makers and policy analysts working in the field of science and research with condensed and updated information and analysis on the development of research systems and policies in all Member States of the European Union plus selected other countries.

The ScanBalt association reports that ScanBalt BioRegion at the end of 2006 hosts 2129 Life science companies including 671 biotech companies, 323 phama companies and 370 medical device companies.