After shelving it for the past decade, the EU Parliament this week adopted a directive forcing large publicly listed companies to break the glass ceilings that have allowed a men-only mentality to thrive in corporate boardrooms across much of Europe. The so-called Women on Boards Directive, formally adopted Nov. 22, will require EU-based public companies to have women in at least 40% of their nonexecutive director posts or 33% of all director posts by the end of June 2026. Companies with fewer than 250 employees will be exempt.

Mdoloris Medical Systems SAS and Pprs SAS reported a joint venture to launch ANI Guardian, a connected medical device that continuously and non-invasively tracks pain levels and well-being in a range of non-verbal or cognitively impaired people.

Vitadx SA is preparing to close a new $8.3 million funding round, to ramp European distribution of its automated software platform for early detection of bladder cancer. The system is based on morphology analysis of cells in a urine sample on a digital cytology slide. “Our Visiocyt technology allows urologists to adjust patient pathways and thereby limit the number of invasive procedures necessary to confirm their diagnosis with people already presenting symptoms,” Allan Rodriguez, CEO and co-founder of Vitadx, told BioWorld.

Stimulating the brain via implanted electrodes is used to treat both movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, and some psychiatric conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder. But researchers are also working on ways to make such implanted electrodes listen instead of talk – and translate neuronal signals for people that have lost the ability speak, or the ability to move.

The first home pregnancy test to analyze saliva rather than urine is due to be on the shelves in Europe at the start of 2023, following CE approval of Salistick, developed by saliva diagnostic specialist Salignostics Ltd.

Surgical teams from the Department of Oncology at Toulouse University Hospital and the Cancer University Institute of Toulouse Oncopole have achieved a total reconstruction of a patient’s nose using a 3D-printed synthetic graft previously implanted in her forearm to pre-vascularize it.

Medtronic plc’s new Extended infusion set shows the advantages of tending to details. Tubing doesn’t get much respect, but the changes Medtronic made to its set will substantially reduce the burden of disease management for patients with diabetes who use insulin pumps. The Medtronic Extended infusion set can be used for up to seven days, more than doubling the time between changes. The changes also sharply reduced insulin loss, resulting in a 25% reduction in waste of the increasingly expensive medication.