The ICT2008 event, which saw the participation of more than 4000 delegates from all over the world, was held in Lyon on 25-27 November 2008.  An entire session in the conference program was dedicated to the presentation of the Virtual Physiological Human initiative, and gave the opportunity to the officers of the eHealth unit to present two new calls for proposal related to this important research topic.

Peter Coveney (University College London, Centre for Computational Science, United Kingdom), on of two scientific coordinators of the VPH Network of Excellence gave the opening talk presenting the activity plan for the network, aimed to strengthen the VPH community and to support the interdisciplinary research that lies at the core of the VPH initiative.  Prof. Coveney gave special attention to the aspects related to the effective use of high performance computing infrastructures, that while play a key role in many VPH projects, required a revision of their access models when the first VPH technologies will start to hit the clinical practice.

Marco Viceconti (Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli, Laboratorio di Tecnologia Medica, Italy) coordinator of the VPHOP integrated project, which aims to fight osteoporosis fracture with new technology based on the VPH paradigm, gave a revised the research rational of the VPH initiative, its current implementation, and the need for future developments.  Prof. Viceconti pointed out a handful of key challenges for the near future, including the need to strengthen the VPH community, or the open problem of sharing and reusing computational models of physiopathological sub-systems.  He also recommended the creation of an industrial think-tank, where key VPH scientists and top managers of European medical technology industries, meet periodically to revise the later research results, and discuss the in term of strategic business positioning for the European industry.

Joël Bacquet (European Commission, INFSO H1, Belgium) presented the two new strategic objectives related to the VPH that were included in the ICT Work Programme 2009-2010: objective 5.3 "Virtual Physiological Human" (VPH) and objective 5.4 "International Cooperation on Virtual Physiological Human" from the ICT Work Programme 2009-2010 Challenge 5. Dr. Bacquet gave detailed information on these objectives, useful to those who intend to participate to new consortia and submit proposals in the fourth call of FP7 for objective 5.4, and in the sixth call for objective 5.3.

The three presentations were followed with great attention by the participants, and were followed by a lively questions-answers that concluded the session.

Additional information

-          VPHOP is a Collaborative Integrated Project that is developing simulation-based technology to predict the risk of bone fracture in osteoporosis patients. Co-funded by the European Commission as part of the Seventh Framework Program. The project runs for four years starting from September 2008. Coordinated by Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute, the Project Consortium gathers 19 European Organisations based in Italy, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, France, United Kingdom, Sweden, and Iceland. For more information: http://www.vphop.eu.

-          Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute is the most famous Italian research hospital for musculoskeletal diseases.  Located in Bologna, Rizzoli is a public institution, funded by the Emilia Romagna region and the Italian Ministry of Welfare. The excellent clinical units, where more than 150,000 patients are treated every year, are well integrated with nine internationally recognised research laboratories. Over 250 researchers trained as engineers, biologists, physicists, and medical doctors conduct strongly interdisciplinary research on musculoskeletal diseases, with particular attention to the transfer of results to the clinical practice.  For more information: http://www.ior.it/.

-          Marco Viceconti is the coordinator of the VPHOP integrated project, a large European research consortium that is developing simulation-based technology for predicting the risk of bone fracture in osteoporosis patients. Since 1989 he works at the Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute where he is currently the Technical Director of the Medical Technology Lab. He is also the Director of the BioComputing Competence Centre. For more information: http://www.ior.it/tecno/.