What is cognitive computing, and what does it look like in healthcare? Health Informatics

Which medicines should Europe's health systems pay for – and how much should they pay? No apologies for returning to the issue, because Europe's authorities have seized on it once again, putting drug pricing at the top of the bill at a meeting of Europe's health ministers in mid-April. Pharmaceutical executives never tire of the discussion either -- because they know that if it goes the wrong way, they could be out of a job, and that in the current tough economic climate, nothing can be ruled out. Even Sanofi's CEO Olivier Brandicourt, the strong man of France's drug industry, was ready to admit -- on his home turf, at a meeting in Lyon, on the eve of the health ministers' meeting -- that he was "not optimistic" that the industry was getting its message across. So there is fertile ground for the health ministers' discussions of pricing -- clothed in the modest figleaf of "Innovations for the benefit of the patient", as a concession to the traditional member-state insistence on keeping these decisions at national level.