Scope

Biomedical research is facing problems of complexity for which the traditional approach is inadequate. This approach is based on the subdivision of the biological systems by dimensional scales (body, organ, tissue, cell, molecule), by scientific disciplines (biology, physiology, biophysics, bioengineering) or by anatomical sub-systems (cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, etc.). But these artificial subdivisions make impossible to unravel the systemic nature that govern many of the physical manifestations of the human body.

Thus, it is necessary, in order to continue the scientific exploitation of the human body that already so dramatically improved the length and quality of the life for a good part of the humanity, to complement this traditional approach with an integrative approach that makes possible to combine observations, theories and predictions across temporal and dimensional scales, across scientific disciplines and across anatomical sub-systems.

This intuition, shared by the vast majority of the experts in the field, gave origin to a number of initiatives such as integrative biology, system biology, physiome, etc.

We** believe that this integrative approach requires a radical transformation on the way biomedical research is conducted. It is necessary a framework within which observations made in the laboratories, in the hospitals, and in the field all over the world can be collected, catalogued, organised, shared and combined in any possible way; a framework that allows experts to collaboratively analyse this observations and develop systemic hypotheses that involve the knowledge of multiple scientific disciplines; a framework that makes possible to interconnect predictive models defined at different scale, with different methods, and with different levels of detail, into systemic networks that provide concretisation to those systemic hypotheses, and make possible to verify their validity by comparison with other clinical or laboratory observations. We call this framework, made of technology and methods, Virtual Physiological Human (VPH).

The scope of the EuroPhysiome Initiative is to promote the development of the Virtual Physiological Human, a methodological and technological framework that will enable the investigation of the human body as a single complex system.

The human body is like a jigsaw puzzle made of a trillion pieces. Currently we try to understand the whole picture by looking at a single piece, or at a few closely interconnected pieces. The Virtual Physiological Human is the frame within which we can finally start to place the pieces all together, and the glue that connect them. The Virtual Physiological Human is not the whole picture, but in the only way might hope one day to see it.

We claim that, given sufficient resources, the European Research System can develop in the next 10 years the Virtual Physiological Human. The scope of this roadmap is to explicitly identify the needs that make mandatory the development of the VPH and to specify what are the objectives of this collective effort. In addition, the document indicates what are, at the current state of the knowledge, the challenges the development of VPH poses, the material and immaterial barriers that we need to overcome, and the impact we can predict VPH will produce on the research, the industry, the clinical practice and the society at large.

** This document is the result of a consensus process promoted by the STEP coordination action that involved hundreds of experts in biomedical research from academy, industry and clinical practice, representing most scientific disciplines that compose biomedical research and the related technological research. For a detailed list of those that contributed to this document see appendix A.