A EU-sponsored project has developed a suite of tools that will enable biotech companies to mine through vast quantities of data created by modern life-science labs to find the nuggets of genetic gold that lie within.

The BioGrid project brought together six partners from the UK, Germany, Cyprus and The Netherlands to address one of the key problems facing the life sciences today.

Researchers from an EU funded project have developed a care system for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) which promises to reduce hospital admissions and improve patients' quality of life.

"GoPubMed is a sort of an intelligent Google for biomedical specialists," explains Dr Michael Alvers, CEO and Co-founder of Transinsight. "The search engine saves time and so accelerates research significantly."

CORDIS, the Community Research and Development Information Service, has launched a new online service covering the research and innovation activities carried out under the Finnish Presidency of the Council of the European Union (1 July to 31 December 2006). Highlighting the latest news and most relevant developments in the research and development (R&D) policy sphere during this period, the Finnish Presidency Service is part of the gateway to national and regional activities on CORDIS.

A new healthcare model in Europe based on preventive and personalised health systems is needed in Europe and can only be achieved using information and communication technologies (ICT), the European Commissioner for Information society and Media, Viviane Reding, told participants at the "ICT for Biomedical Sciences 2006" conference in Brussels on 29 June. Computational simulation and modelling were cited as cornerstones to this new model.

Finland has announced its priorities for research and innovation during its Presidency of the EU, started on 1 July: concluding negotiations on the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7); and developing a broad-based innovation policy.

The European Commission has adopted an amended proposal for the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), which seeks to incorporate amendments made by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers in their first readings. The Commission reports that the revised proposals "take up in spirit and content if not necessarily always with the exact wording, to a large proportion the position taken by the other institutions".