Hugo Katus, Klaus Hallermayer

A hundred times more infectious than HIV, hepatitis B is a particularly recalcitrant disease that affects 350 million people chronically worldwide and has proven resistant to most treatments. But French scientists Gilles Gosselin, Jean-Louis Imbach and Martin L. Bryant have developed a highly effective anti-viral drug against hepatitis B which shows less cross-resistance with other medications and can thus be used as a first line of treatment.

Working in the mobile phone division of Ericsson in the mid-1990s, Dutch engineer Jaap Haartsen found a revolutionary way to connect electronic gadgets to each other at short range without the use of cables, using a variety of low-power radio frequencies. Now used in more than two billion devices worldwide, Bluetooth has changed not only the way electronic devices connect with each other, but also how people connect and communicate.

Aware of the drawbacks of traditional hearing-aid design, a team of Danish inventors from the company WIDEX created a new, computer-aided method to manufacture individually-fitted, comfortable hearing-aid devices. Their invention revolutionised the sector and is the design basis for nearly every in-the-canal hearing aid on the market today. It has increased quality of life for millions of people around the world.