On March 10th, the European Brain Council (EBC) met with Leon Delvaux, President Juncker’s adviser on Health and Food Safety, and Sigrid Wimmer from DG SANCO. The following issues were addressed: Horizon 2020 budget cuts: The main purpose of this meeting was to introduce EBC’s work, and present a position paper endorsed by EBC members regarding Horizon 2020 budget cuts [...]

Is pension at the age of 70 Europe's future? The Summit on Innovation for Active and Healthy Ageing took place in Brussels on 9-10 March 2015. The European Commission invited participants to discuss how Europe can address the challenges and seize the opportunities arising from demographic change through ICT and innovation. A number of European Commissioners, national ministers, regional authorities [...]

In November 2014, a first Seminar on the “Value of Health” was held in Brussels and led to the elaboration of a scoping paper examining the various approaches and frameworks to measure healthcare outcomes in Europe. Further to this, a roundtable was organized on March 5, 2015, to discuss “Healthcare Outcomes as a Drive for Sustainable Health Systems”. Nowadays, healthcare [...]

Voices of protesters for and against animal testing are once again about to rise. On March 3rd, the Stop Vivisection European Citizen’s Initiative was submitted to the European Commission, after collecting almost 1,2 million signatures. The goal of this initiative – only the 3rd one to be successful since the launch of the citizen’s initiative programme – is to tackle [...]

“If you want walk fast walk alone, if you want walk far walk together”, this African proverb cited by Dr. Karim Berkouk, Deputy Head of Unit ‘Non-Communicable Diseases and the Challenge of Healthy Aging European Commission, summarises at the best the take-home message of the EBC seminar: “Criteria for success: The future of collaborative brain research” that took place in [...]

On March 3rd 2015, European Research Ministers met and reiterated their willingness for open science. Further to this event, DG CONNECT organized on the next day a workshop on “Open Data on e-infrastructure and services for Neuroscience”. This was motivated by the fact that the European Commission believes that Neuroscience is a particularly active field of research, whose needs and [...]

One of the key recommendations coming from the European Month of the Brain initiated by DG Research and held in May 2013 was: “There is a need for countries to develop, or refine, national strategies on brain research and healthcare within an overarching European context. Successful examples of national strategies in other research areas, such as cancer, already exist in Europe.” One example [...]

On 25th February 2015, the Joint Action on Metal Health and Wellbeing (JAMHW) held a meeting in Brussels to present and discuss its provisional findings and policy recommendations on the following thematic areas: depression, suicide and e-health; community-based approaches in mental health; mental health at work places; mental health in all policies. The main concerns raised on this occasion were [...]

On 23rd February 2015, the European Parliament Interest Group on Brain, Mind and Pain, co-ordinated by the European Federation of Neurological Associations (EFNA) and Pain Alliance Europe (PAE) was officially launched in Brussels. MEP Marian Harkin, who was co-chairing the event, stressed the fact that today, research, funding and public awareness regarding brain disorders don’t match the burden they represent. [...]

The EBC held its February Board & Industry Board Meetings in Brussels on February 18&19, 2015. On that occasion, delegates from EBC Board Members and industry partners had an opportunity to look into the proposed activities and projects for the organization on the basis of its Operational Plan for 2015. These were presented as follow up of discussions of the [...]