Gordon Clapworthy and Marco Viceconti participated as delegates and speakers to the IST2006 conference, on behalf of the STEP consortium.

Marco Viceconti was invited to discuss the Virtual Physiological Human as as exemplary case of Team Research in a session entitled Research Drivers.

The Virtual Physiological Human session was very successful. With the following presentations:

• Gérard COMYN, European Commission: Towards sustainable and personalised healthcare. Introduction to challenge five of the IST work programme
• Joël BACQUET, European Commission. The Virtual Physiological Human. Presentation of the IST work programme strategic objective "Virtual Physiological Human"
• Marco VICECONTI, Istituti Ortopedici Rizzoli. Virtual Physiological human: vision and early experiences
• Peter SLOOT, University of Amsterdam. Bridging Scales: Modelling and Simulation for the Life Sciences
• Pierre JANNIN, Visages-U 746 INRIA-INSERM. Models of surgical procedures in Computer Assisted NeuroSurgery

the speakers gave a very broad perspective of the VPH; the session was well attended, and generated long list of questions from the floor, and many heated discussions during the folowing coffee break.

Gordon Clapworthy contributed to the networking session on Emerging eHealth technologies, cross-cutting RTD needs and health policy priorities organised by Karl STROETMANN.

Gordon attended also the networking session entitled A roadmap towards a European HealthGrid, organised by the SHARE coordination action.

The event was a great success of public and of participation, and the VPH received a great deal of attention, marking once again its role as one of the grand challenges for ICT in the FP7.