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The Antarctica blog of European Commission science expert Didier Schmitt – a special Science|Business feature

The PROM scores for anorexia nervosa and other unspecified eating disorders, indicate that patient-reported assessments are more indicative of patients’ eating disorder symptoms than clinician evaluations.

The study, commissioned by the electronics company Philips, covers Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the UK and the US.

Patient surveys show that Danes rate their GP care highly, with 91 per cent giving a positive assessment compared to a European Union average of 84 per cent in a recent survey, published by the OECD.

On average 18.4 per cent of the patients walking 900 or more steps saw their condition worsen for reasons associated with being in hospital. Of those who took fewer steps, 55.4 per cent saw their condition worsen.

In order to provide a more objective way of assessing the quality of cancer registry data, scientists at the EU’s Joint Research Centre investigated whether cancer incidence rates obeyed Benford's law, or the law of first digits.

The Chief Inspector of General Practice found 75 of the practices to be good, 16 to require improvement, and two to be inadequate.

There should be a greater effort to create a harmonised system for health technology assessment (HTA), according to a paper issued by the Institute of Competitiveness (I-Com Europe), an Italian think tank.

A series of pilot projects will use patient outcomes to inform funding decisions, initiating a move from activity-based to value-based healthcare

A Norwegian hospital group factored in patient perception of pain and when deciding which intravenous catheters to buy. As a result, it bought more expensive devices, but they are easier to use, saving time, reducing pain