University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) NHS Foundation Trust has transformed the way that its liver transplant team matches life-saving organs to recipients using BlackBerry smartphones. Now surgeons and transplant recipient co-ordinators have secure access to patient and donor data on the move, which dramatically improves the speed of matching the most appropriate recipient for each donor and ultimately frees up time for patient care.

Europe must act to prevent new legislation impeding the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in medical research, diagnosis and treatment, states the European Science Foundation (ESF) in a new report. The report is endorsed by the European Medical Research Councils, representing the medical research communities in 30 countries.

The European Commission welcomed the launch of a €500 million initiative which boosts European supercomputer capacities and opens them up to scientists across Europe. The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) unites the European Commission and 20 countries across Europe in a unique initiative which will enable researchers to use super fast computers located in other countries to make up to 1000 trillion calculations per second for their research projects.

A new online platform named HealthCompetence.eu has been presented at the Information day on FP7 Health Research organised by the European Commission. This new platform includes all projects related to life science and health supported by the European Commission since 2004. Far from being a static database, it aims to present the projects' latest results in terms of technology offers, patents and publications.

A consultation inviting citizens, businesses and researchers to share ideas on how best to use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to help older Europeans live more independently, and more generally to establish new ways to put ICTs at the service of the most vulnerable members of society, has been launched by a high-level panel established to advise the European Commission on the functioning of the Ambient Assisted Living joint programme (AAL JP).

Implementing the ambitious Digital Agenda for Europe unveiled by the European Commission would contribute significantly to the EU's economic growth and spread the benefits of the digital era to all sections of society.

Europe's digital economy is growing in strength, spreading throughout all sectors of the economy and reaching into all areas of our lives, according to the European Commission's Digital Competitiveness report. Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have driven half of the productivity growth in Europe over the past 15 years.