Providing health care at tolerable cost is one of the greatest challenges facing the world in this century. Technologies that may offer enhanced quality of care at reduced cost, such as plasma technology, will be of immense societal and commercial value. This action will focus on medical and biomedical applications of low-temperature, non-thermal atmospheric pressure plasmas, in fields including surface treatment of biomedical devices, sterilisation, and therapeutic techniques, such as wound sterilisation and cancer treatment. This is an interdisciplinary topic: The Action will involve clinicians, biologists, chemists and physicists, together with industrialists ready to exploit the results. The collective purpose of the participants in this Action is to develop synergistic links between their research programmes, and to take full advantage of the opportunities that follow to create a leadership position for Europe in this important emerging area.