Dr Ian Piper's research into Intensive Care management of critically ill brain injured patients has recently been boosted by obtaining EEC project funding of 1.8 million Euros under the Quality of life and Management of Living resources programme. This major funding will transform the research from concept to reality and lead to the creation of a large open research database which will, without doubt, improve the future management and monitoring of these patients. This research was initiated with funding from the Neurosciences Foundation. Dr Piper has established an international collaboration, called the Brain Monitoring with Information Technology (BrainIT) group, consisting of 30 neuro-intensive care units across Europe, four medical device companies including Phillips Medical and three pharmaceutical companies (Jansen, Bayer and Pharmos). The group uniquely focuses upon developing computer based high resolution (minute by minute) intensive care data collection coupled with supporting open-internet based expanded access to research data. See: www.brainit.gla.ac.uk/brainit.