Brussels has gradually removed controls on food items coming from regions affected by the nuclear explosion. Products including wild mushrooms, some fish and wild edible plants have remained subject to pre-export testing.

“The decision by the EU to lift import restrictions on Japanese food will provide strong support to the reconstruction of the affected area,” said Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida during a press conference after an EU-Japan summit in Brussels.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the decision was “based on science, based on the proof of evidence and based on the assessment of the International Atomic Energy Agency”.

Controls on food items were imposed shortly after a 2011 tsunami knocked out the cooling systems of nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daichi plant, triggering a meltdown.

Water used to cool the reactors became contaminated with radioactive nuclides. It has since been filtered to remove most harmful material but there is no practical way to filter out tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen.

Last week, the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, approved Japan’s plans to release radioactive water gradually into the Pacific, a plan that has been condemned by China and South Korea and opposed by local fisherfolk. Hong Kong has warned it will ban some Japanese sea products if Japan discharges the water.

Kishida said the UN agency had concluded that releasing the water was “consistent with international standards” and “negligible on people and the environment”.

The EU called on Japan to monitor fish, fish products and seaweed close to the release site for contaminated cooling water.

The bloc has also agreed greater access for European agricultural products to Japanese markets. “We are working to facilitate access of agri-products, beef, fruit and vegetables in particular, to Japan,” said Charles Michel, the president of the European Council.

Talks in Brussels also focused on security concerns, with the EU and Japan launching a “strategic dialogue” at foreign ministerial level to co-ordinate on security threats, and discussing means for both partners to diversify supply chains from China, in industries such as semiconductors and critical raw materials.

Before the summit, Japanese officials said that Russia’s war in Ukraine “can be east Asia tomorrow”, after North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan on Wednesday and as China continued its “military build-up in an opaque manner”.

“We know that Indo-Pacific security and European security are indivisible,” said von der Leyen.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Ian Johnston

BetterHelp, owned by $4bn US-listed Teladoc Health, is one of several digital mental health companies that have surged in popularity in recent years, driven by higher demand for virtual therapy during the pandemic.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Ian Johnston

Across the health and care sector, new partnerships with technology companies are being forged with the aim of cutting costs as well as contributing to wider environmental goals.

Other companies have struggled to monetise their work with the NHS. Babylon, the telemedicine company behind GP at Hand app, has wound down UK operations to instead focus on the more lucrative US market.

At MediMusic, Jones lamented a lack of “segmentation” that meant all digital technology, from an app “right the way through to high end robotics”, had to bear the same burden of regulatory compliance. In the US, in contrast, burdens varied according to the complexity of the intervention, he suggested.

He welcomed an announcement by chancellor Jeremy Hunt this month that the UK medicines regulator, the MHRA, would from next year “allow rapid, often near automatic” sign-off for technologies already approved by trusted regulators elsewhere and would set up a fast new approval process for the most cutting-edge devices.

The NHS said it was “already leading the world in developing and adopting innovations which improve patient care”.

“Thanks to partnerships with industry, we have led the way in achieving the world’s first ever net zero cancer operation, we have delivered chemotherapy drugs by drone and the NHS has the UK’s first hospital capable of being powered completely by solar energy.”

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Ian Johnston

The UK-registered group was spun out of its sister company DeepMind, Google’s AI unit, in November last year, to focus on using AI technology to create new drugs to treat and prevent diseases.

Isomorphic is currently in talks with major pharmaceutical companies and is expected to announce a deal in the next few months, according to two people familiar with the plans.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Ian Johnston