09/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - At a meeting in the European Parliament sponsored by Avril Doyle MEP, the Society for Medical Innovation and Technology (SMIT) launched a call for research and development in surgery. At the meeting, SMIT representative Professor Di Lorenzo said that innovation and research in surgery was driven only by a market-based approach with US companies completely dominating the sector. Companies, he said, only develop tools and instruments that are expected to be profitable, when several sectors of medicine could benefit from advances in surgery (he mentioned, among others, rare disorders). SMIT, therefore, has called for increased European public support through research framework programmes and national spending on research in this area. Currently, there are just 25 R&D projects that are in some way connected to surgery (mainly in the areas of information and communication technologies (ICT) and nanotechnologies) being financed by the 7th framework programme. (O.J./transl.rt)