Maxime Lebigot is a nurse. Back in 2016, he and his wife Elodie had their first child . They were very happy, but when they moved to Laval, a town of some 50,000 inhabitants in north-western France, they soon realised that no doctor was available to take charge of him .

As future covid-19 prevalence varies across time, health authorities must revolutionise testing to see if people are infected.

Many of the prototypes that have made the history of biorobotics worldwide are visible in a showcase set up at The BioRobotics Institute of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pontedera, near Pisa, Italy.

Hospitals generate huge amounts of rubbish. According to the World Health Organization , high-income countries produce up to 0.5 kg of hazardous waste per hospital bed per day.

Darwin would be puzzled. He described natural selection as a slow process, selecting for the most suited organisms to a given environment.

If aliens were to examine a human, they would think we were just slavish organisms designed to feed microbes and carry them around. Our bodies contain ten times more bacteria than cells , and there are an estimated 3.

The World Health Organisation, WHO, recently published its first Global Report on Antimicrobial Resistance . This publication demonstrates that resistance against antibiotics is a serious threat to global public health.

Millions of people undergo surgery each year. Many of them suffer from moderate to severe pain afterwards. This post-operative pain may impede recovery or even lead on into chronic pain .

Modern information technologies allow medical researchers to draw on a huge pool of patient data. These are routinely assessed in hospital settings or through health care systems.

About 20 million Europeans are subject to food allergies. Now scientists are looking at these allergies in new ways. It involves the food industry in its work and pays special attention to the link between early diets and allergy in later life .

Diseases of the central nervous system are a big burden to society . According to estimates, they cost €800 billion per year in Europe. And for most of them, there is no definitive cure.

According to estimates, more than 1.2 million people in Europe are affected by Parkinson’s disease. Health costs for the disease amount to €11 billion euros per year.

European scientists set up new therapeutic approaches to tackle specific Lysosomal Storage Disorders: a new drug combination and enzyme replacement therapy against Pompe disease and gene therapy against MPS V I (Mucopolysaccharidosis VI).

Lysosomes are membrane-bound organelles found in most animal cells. They are responsible for treating cellular waste. Genetic mutations in lysosomal enzymes lead to lysosome malfunction and waste accumulation.

Lysosomes are intracellular organelles that degrade and recycle ‘waste’ molecules. Lysosomal Storage Disorders (LSDs) comprise a large group of congenital metabolic diseases affecting altogether one in 8,000 newborns.

There is a hepatitis C epidemic in Egypt. Ironically, this is in large part due to a public health campaign in the 1960s and 1970s, during which injection needles were being re-used.

One of the biggest challenges today is to understand the human brain and we never have been closer to realize it. More than 130 institutes are taking part in  one of Europe´s largest research projects , funded with 1.

Talking or reading. Texting a message or listening. The dilemma of choosing between various tasks is not an invention of the modern information age. Humans and all vertebrates have to prioritise their actions.