An EU project team is developing a new platform for delivering flexible services on your chosen communications device. And the technologies employed read like a hit-parade of what's hot in hi-tech, the semantic web, intelligent agents, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and more.

An EU programme has been so successful in tackling illegal and harmful content on the internet that it is being used as a model by other regions of the world.

eHealth services promise to improve the quality and provision of care while reducing costs. However questions exist over the legal and regulatory implications for particular eHealth services. One initiative, 'Legally eHealth', aims to help remove those doubts.

There is little current information available about the legal implications of eHealth. However growing interest in and implementation of eHealth systems is certain to bring this topic to the fore. Hence the interest in the Legally eHealth study.

The Scientific Council of the European Research Council (ERC) has finalised the first draft of its work programme for 2007, outlining who will be eligible to apply for funding from the ERC, and how proposals will be evaluated.

The ERC is a new initiative, and is due to begin operating in 2007 as part of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). As the work programme explains, "The fundamental principle for all ERC activities is that of stimulating investigator-initiated frontier research across all fields of research, on the basis of excellence."

As Europe's population ages, improving healthcare and inclusion for the elderly is becoming a fast expanding field of research. But researchers in the new member states and candidate countries have been slow to take advantage of IST funding and cooperation in these areas. The EPIST project team sought to change that.

"The main problem is that research organisations and companies in the New Member Countries (NMCs) and Associated Candidate Countries (ACCs) don't know how EU research projects work," explains EPIST coordinator Ira Vater of European Business Associates in Italy.

Supporting Healthcare Professionals with Advanced Tools to Reduce their Loads
The medical practitioners at all levels are becoming more overloaded as the aging population of Europe increases. The health services of the EU can claim considerable credit for the decline in mortality over the last thirty years. However this success, particularly the fall in mortality rates among older people, has increased the demand for healthcare.

Researchers working on an EU-funded project have developed a new set of semantic Web tools which they claim will help users find the online news that matters to them most, more quickly.