A highly customisable robot companion designed by EU-funded researchers to offer support to older people is currently being presented across Europe and could find its way into people's homes within two or three years, potentially greatly enhancing quality of life for older citizens and people with memory or mobility problems.
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European Journal of ePractice Call for Papers
From eHealth to mHealth: Society becomes the driver of its health activities
The further use of wireless internet and gadgets that receive and transmit data (tablet computers, smartphones and laptops) have constituted a new trend in eHealth, providing for more on-the-spot services. Mobile health (known as mHealth) is a developing trend in the eHealth field that encompasses and exploits much broader use of mobile telecommunications and multimedia technologies as they are integrated within increasingly mobile and wireless healthcare delivery systems.
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European Health Award 2013: Six Shortlisted Projects with a Patient-Centred Focus
Six cutting-edge projects are in the running for the prestigious €10,000 European Health Award 2013, sponsored by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health and FOPI, which brings together Austria's research-based pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The winner will be chosen by a panel of leading health experts, and announced during the 16th EHFG conference, being held in the Gastein Valley from the 2nd to 4th October.
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Psychotherapy via the Internet
Does psychotherapy via the Internet work? For the first time, clinical researchers from the University of Zurich have studied whether online psychotherapy and conventional face-to-face therapy are equally effective in experiments. Based on earlier studies, the Zurich team assumed that the two forms of therapy were on a par. Not only was their theory confirmed, the results for online therapy even exceeded their expectations.
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Swiss, French & German Scientists Develop Miniature Artificial Insect Eyes
Scientists in Switzerland, Germany, and France explored how the insect eye works and designed and built the first fully-functional miniature curved artificial compound eyes. The "CURVACE" project received €2 million in EU funding to develop the miniature "insect" eyes, which have high industrial potential in mobile robotics, smart clothing and medical applications.
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Chips that Mimic the Brain
No computer works as efficiently as the human brain - so much so that building an artificial brain is the goal of many scientists. Neuroinformatics researchers from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich have now made a breakthrough in this direction by understanding how to configure so-called neuromorphic chips to imitate the brain's information processing abilities in real-time.
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'Intelligent Knife' Tells Surgeon which Tissue is Cancerous
Scientists have developed an "intelligent knife" that can tell surgeons immediately whether the tissue they are cutting is cancerous or not. In the first study to test the invention in the operating theatre, the "iKnife" diagnosed tissue samples from 91 patients with 100 per cent accuracy, instantly providing information that normally takes up to half an hour to reveal using laboratory tests.
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