With Europe's population ageing rapidly and the demand for healthcare growing, healthcare services need to become more efficient. However, little hard evidence is available on the contribution of eHealth solutions.

The Network of Excellence (NoE) GA2LEN is urging policy makers to support the European Parliament's proposal to include allergic diseases in the health priorities of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

The 2006 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard shows that the top 1000 EU companies increased their R&D by an average of 5.3 % in 2005. This figure is in line with the results of a Commission survey released earlier this year. The top 1000 non-EU companies raised their R&D investment by 7.7%, showing a world-wide boost in R&D spending.

Janez Potocnik, the European Commissioner for Science and Research, has exhorted the countries of south-eastern Europe to invest more heavily in research.

China attracts interest all over the world. Finns are now exporting their health care expertise to China. A Chinese-Finnish collaboration, the Healthy China project is about the prevention of lifestyle diseases such as adult onset diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Bombarded by information from numerous sources, many people today turn to electronic news-aggregation services to find what they want. One European team of researchers claims to have developed a flexible and innovative tool that enables journalists and other users to fine-tune the process of news-gathering and delivery.

The European Council adopted a common position on the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) at a Competitiveness Council meeting, held on 25 September in Brussels. Agreement on FP7 should now be reached under the co-decision procedure, assuming the European Parliament responds positively in its second reading.