Science|Business

The experts agree: Health systems can get better if they study the patient data, to see what produces the best outcomes. But in practice, questions abound. How do you avoid information overload? Do you gather information from the patients alone, or also from their family? Should hospital budgets be linked in some way to this information?

Adverse events occur in one in ten patients admitted to hospital, adding 13 – 17 per cent to healthcare costs. Up to 50 per cent of prescriptions for antibiotics are unnecessary. Between 12 and 56 per cent of visits to accident and emergency departments are inappropriate. The share that generic drugs have in the overall market ranges from 10 per cent to 80 per cent.

The experts agree: Health systems can get better if they study the patient data, to see what produces the best outcomes. But in practice, questions abound. How do you avoid information overload? Do you gather information from the patients alone, or also from their family? Should hospital budgets be linked in some way to this information?

Since 2004 the National Health System (NHS) in the UK has rewarded general practitioners for the provision of quality care through the ‘Quality and Outcomes Framework’ under which adherence to standardised protocols is assessed by process measures. “This comes with the assumption that adhering to these measures gives good quality outcomes.

Backed by an $11.3-million federal grant, Canadian scientists led by teams at UdeM and the University of British Columbia are helping design the ANDES instrument for the European Extremely Large Telescope. The European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) now under construction in Chile will soon be the most powerful optical and infrared telescope ever built — and Canada will have a major role in its development.

The MV Hondius was sailing from Argentina to Cape Verde when several cases of hantavirus were detected aboard. The Dutch-flagged cruise ship has since cut its journey short and EU health authorities have coordinated their response to contain the deadly outbreak. And while experts do not expect it to turn into another Covid pandemic, researchers have not stopped working on infectious diseases under Horizon Europe.

The EU is preparing to establish a Bioeconomy Investment Deployment Group, bringing together financial institutions and investors in a bid to coordinate investments and improve access to finance.The group will help to develop a pipeline of bankable projects, and advise the EU on financial instruments and regulatory improvements that could support companies at the crucial scale-up and deployment stages.

The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is set to fund cross-border networks of German, French and Polish researchers, after the three countries agreed to deepen cooperation earlier this spring. Here’s how the Future Network Weimar Triangle scheme will work.The DAAD’s fund for the cross-border networking initiative is €4.5 million, and is looking to fund around 120 short stays for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from the three countries by 2029.

Collaborations between companies and universities are time-consuming and complicated to set up, and so tend to be reserved for major projects. But what about the little things? An EU-funded initiative has just finished testing a platform that brought together companies with discrete problems to solve and academic teams willing to co-create solutions in four to eight weeks.

The Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) has opened a call for research and innovation projects for AI in science, including funding aimed at boosting international cooperation.The cooperation-driven call, which complements a call for strategic projects, will fund around 20 projects, each with an approximate budget of JPY 200 million , or a little over €1 million. But JST is open to extending this financing to as much as JPY 650 million per project.