The final residual task we had as STEP consortium was to create a printed version of the VPH roadmap, and ship it to a long list of stakeholders who might care about the VPH for one reason or another.


This is to inform you that the work is now completed. The PDF version of the printed book is available online, and looks much
nicer than the home-made version we produced originally.
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/STEP/Reception/step_presentations/RoadMap/vph_roadmap_printed.pdf


Meanwhile, the printing house has started shipping the 1500+ copies to the list of addresses we supplied them. STEP experts should receive their individual copies; however, managing so many addresses may produce the occasional error, or perhaps you will have moved location in the intervening time, so it is possible that some of you do not receive it.


We have saved some extra copies, so if yours does not arrive please contact us (though we ask that you allow sufficient time for the postal services to deliver it before you do this). Please consider that the idea of the printed copy is mostly for lobbying; so our request is that you take your printed copy and manage to put it in the hands of the most influential person you know, with some explanation about why it is a good idea to fund VPH/Physiome/Integrative research at local, national and European level.


We cannot make the distribution list public, but I can tell you that it includes most offices of the European Commission including JRCs, all Members of the European Parliament, all scientific society members of EAMBES, many European associations for trade, social representation, etc. all related to ICT, health, etc., board members of EURAB, Healthcare and Research ministries of all member states, all USA NIH institutes, and the 200+ STEP experts.


If you know personally some key persons in these organisations, it might be a good idea to give them a call or pay them a visit, to reinforce and explain the message in the Roadmap. If you want to know to whom we mailed the printed copy in a given organisation, please make specific enquires to Annalisa Bandieri <bandieri@tecno.ior.it>.


Gordon and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff in our two groups that made this huge effort possible; a particular mention goes to Annalisa, who after 18 months of hard work for STEP spent the last two months struggling with this huge mailing list, and, believe me, it was not fun. Thanks a lot, Anna, for all of your hard work and for the helpful and cheerful way in which you have dealt with all of the issues we have encountered throughout the project.


Regards


Marco Viceconti and Gordon Clapworthy
STEP Coordinators