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The advancements in molecular biology have made biotechnology a billion-dollar business over the last two decades. Recent developments in instrumentation, nano-technology and information technology have provided the biomedical research community with enormous amounts of diverse information governing biological systems. Consequently, there is an urgent need for information storage, curation, analysis and retrieval (ISCAR) using bioinformatics tools. Though the very definition of bioinformatics is debatable, there is a general agreement about the importance of certain fundamental concepts. Broadly, bioinformatics is the marriage between modern biology and information technology to glean new knowledge from redundant databases. Bioinformatics helps researchers gather, standardize, combine and manipulate data to tease out the knowledge they contain. In future, it will guide in performing in silico biotechnological experiments to aid biomedical research and application. Hence "SILICO BIOTECH" highlights the simple relationships between different disciplines that govern the complex drug discovery process and its relevance in health care.

In 2002, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced a goal of quadrupling per capita income by the year 2020. Starting at income levels of the year 2000, this would require a growth rate of 7.2 percent per annum in per capita income or close to 8.0 percent in GDP. Such unresolved and emerging problems as growing income disparities, increasing pollution, pressures on infrastructure, the inefficiency of stateowned enterprises, and political instability are often cited as reasons to doubt the attainability of the CCP's goal. However, China's progress in addressing fundamental constraints that might limit rapid economic growth augurs well for the success of its economic goals. Although there are disagreements about economic policy among top leaders, the continued transformation into a market economy and the promotion of increasing local autonomy in economic matters are not in doubt. In education, China has substantially increased the percentage of its workforce receiving a college education, and continuing growth in this investment in human capital could account for a large portion of the desired growth rate. In addition, the value of improvements in the quality of economic output unmeasured by GDP, such as advances in the quality of health care and education, could raise reported growth rates by as much as 60 percent. Finally, the government's increasing sensitivity to public opinion and issues of inequality and corruption, combined with improving living conditions, have resulted in a level of popular confidence in the government that makes political instability unlikely.

We study the endogenous relationship between health care, life expectancy and output in a neoclassical growth model. While health care competes resources away from goods production, it prolongs life expectancy which, in turn, leads to higher capital accumulation through a private annuity market. We show that savings and health care are complements in equilibrium, with both rising with economic development. Our model is therefore consistent with several stylized facts, namely: (i) countries spend more on health care as they prosper, (ii) individuals in rich countries tend to live longer, and (iii) population aging is more pronounced in rich countries. Moreover, via the longevity-enhancing channel, health care and health production technology are found by simulation to be growth- and welfare-promoting.

After describing the institutions for health care in China as they evolved since 1949, this paper presents statistical demand functions for health care. It applies the demand functions to explain the rapid increase in health care demand and the resulting rapid increase in price when supply failed to increase. The failure in increase in supply was traced to the system of public supply of health care in China. The reform experience of Suqian city in the privatization of health care is reported to demonstrate the positive effect of privatization on supply. The government's health care program for the urban and rural population is described and an evaluation of it is provided.

Quality reports about health plans and providers are becoming more prevalent in health care markets. This paper casts the decision about what information to report to consumers about health plans as a policy decision. In a market with adverse selection, complete information about quality leads to inefficient outcomes. In a Rothschild-Stiglitz model, we show that averaging quality information into a summary report can enforce pooling in health insurance, and by choice of the right weights in the averaged report, a payer or regulator can induce first-best quality choices. The optimal quality report is as powerful as optimal risk adjustment in correcting adverse selection inefficiencies. ©2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Virtual reality, a new paradigm for relationship between humans and computers, has been recently well-known and currently investigated for practical use in the various industrial fields. Using three-dimensional computer graphics, interactive devices, and high-resolution display, a virtual world can be realized in which one can pick up imaginary objects as if they were physical world. Using this technology, Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd. has been developing several application systems for industrial use since 1990. This paper details three VR application systems operating in the real world: Virtual Space Decision Support System employing Kansei Engineering which is applied for production and sales mainly in the system kitchen business, a telepresence robot system employing semi-autonomous mobile function which is utilized for security field and a low-cost VR system employing physiological feedback mechanism which is used for health care field.

Public policy makers around the world are concerned with the cost and quality of healthcare. I argue that competition-policy economics can make valuable contributions to solving the healthcare crisis by addressing four fundamental questions:

• Why don't insurance companies offer policies that generate greater consumer incentives to seek low-cost providers and generate increased price competition?
• How can consumers be provided with information that will induce stronger quality competition?
• What organizational structures promote the most efficient coordination among complementary care providers and between insurers and care providers?
• How do structure and conduct in markets for healthcare insurance and healthcare services affect the incentives to create and adopt new healthcare goods and services?