Health
Tackling physical inactivity in Europe: how can we encourage a healthier lifestyle?
Despite the widely recognised advantages of an active lifestyle, including lowering the risk of chronic diseases and preventing premature death, Europeans don’t exercise enough. The data from the OECD's report "Step Up! Tackling the Burden of Insufficient Physical Activity in Europe” showcase an alarming situation within Europe, as around 45% of Europeans declare that they ...
Interview with Prof. Aïda Solé-Auró on factors that determine healthy ageing
Currently, in response to last year’s Council invitation, the Commission is developing a set of key policy tools to assist Member States in navigating the impacts of an ageing population on Europe’s competitiveness and its society. These plans took the stage in a recent plenary debate in the European Parliament on healthy lifestyles and active ...
Risks and challenges of the agent of the lung disease Mycoplasma pneumoniae
The prevalence of this atypical lung infection agent is widely underestimated - people are often not even aware that they have it - and many antibiotics cannot effectively treat it; Mycoplasma pneumoniae outbreaks occur every few years. This winter, countries like China, Denmark, France and the Netherlands reported an increase in cases, especially in children. ...
‘We should protect the intangible aspects of our mental worlds’
"Once we start seeing ourselves only in terms of data, we’ve reduced ourselves to something that can be bought and sold." Interview with philosopher and cognitive scientist Ophelia Deroy. Professor Ophelia Deroy (Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, Munich Interactive Intelligence lab and University of London) is an expert in an interesting and relatively new domain: Neuro ...
Neurorights: Do our brains need to be protected by legislation?
Interview with Prof. Guilherme Wood on the Neurorights Today we stand on the threshold of a new revolution: neurotechnology – devices and procedures that seek to access, assess, emulate and act on neural systems – is booming. Driven by new developments in artificial intelligence, they can be used for medical purposes, such as helping paralysed ...
New STOA study on better access to medicines in the EU
Interview with study author Simona Gamba When it comes to less profitable markets such as rare diseases, paediatric diseases or antimicrobials, medicines in the EU could be hard to come by, both in terms of price and availability. On Thursday 19 October, Senior Assistant Professor Simona Gamba (University of Milan, Italy) presented the study "Improving ...
The use of non-invasive brain stimulation for mental health and more: ethics and EU regulation
As part of an international research consortium (the EU-funded STIMCODE project), senior researcher Dr Moritz Julian Maier and his team have just developed recommendations on EU regulation and a code of conduct regarding non-invasive brain stimulation techniques: electrically or electromagnetically stimulating parts of the brain. Much needed, because such techniques are being used more and ...
Tackling rare diseases together: Prof. Kjeld Schmiegelow proposes more collaboration and EU expert hubs
"Multinational rare disease expert hubs would speed up research, innovation and development", says Kjeld Schmiegelow, Professor of paediatrics and paediatric oncology at the Copenhagen University Hospital (Denmark). Together with his colleagues, he proposes an EU level framework for data sharing and scientific collaboration to tackle rare diseases. Prof. Schmiegelow will be one of the speakers of ...
