Welcome!

Biomedical Research & Technology, Biomedical Industry and Clinical Practice needed a meeting place where to develop the shared vision called Integrative Research. We created it: is called Biomed Town. Biomed Town is an on-line community open and free to anyone has a professional or educational interest in biomedical research & practice. Started in 2006 as support of the coordination action STEP, it slowly became the de facto home for various biomedical research initiatives, in particular those related to the so-called integrative research, an umbrella concept that includes physiome, system biology, multiscale modelling, etc.

How to become a member

BiomedTown is free community of peers who have a professional or educational interest in biomedical research & technology. Anyone interested can submit his/her application form to the City Managers. We shall approve all applications if they report an institutional email address (no hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc.) and the affiliation to a division, department, laboratory, course etc. within that institution clearly related to biomedical research & technology. If your application does not fully match these criteria, it will be rejected.

Why Biomed Town

Biomed Town is a community of communities. This was rendered around the metaphor of the town. Biomed Town is a virtual town made of Buildings and Squares.

Buildings host virtual organizations such as research consortia, companies, institutions, interest groups, etc. At the Information Desk of the City Hall you will find all the instructions on how to open a building representing your organisation, and the rules that regulate the construction of new buildings in our virtual town. Once you have your building you can create as many rooms as you like in it, and populate them with many useful resources such as documents, web pages, folders, discussion forums, news, shared calendars, etc.. This will let you create the best virtual collaborative environment for your organisation. Your building will be private by default, and it will be up to you to decide room by room who can enter it.

Squares are were the people meet, discuss, exchange experiences and pointers to resources; they represent the communities that populate our city, but that are not specifically represented by an organisation. At the Information Desk City Hall you will find all the instructions on how to reccomend to the City Managers the creation of a new square representing a shared interest within the community, and the rules that regulate the construction of new squares in our virtual town. Squares belong to the City and are operated by the City Managers. Squares can contain Forum Folders and Folders. Forums contain public non-moderated forums. Folders contain events, news, ads, and links relevant for that community. They are a special type of folder that can contain only certain Plone objects. Squares are the most anarchical objects; they do not have any local manager. Folders are managed by the city managers, as they define the public face of the town. Each user interested in the community located in that square can joint its forum folder. The user can also submit objects for posting on the square folders, which will be approved by the City Managers.

The story so far

Biomed Town is operated by the BioComputing Competence Centre The launch of Biomed Town followed three separated phases:

Awake: 21-10-2005 ==> 31-12-2005. In that period the city services was in Beta testing. Only selected users were allowed to sign-up; most of the work was dedicated to the creation of the basic technological infrastructures.

Sunrise: 1-1-2006 ==> 31-12-2008. During this period the initiative was supported by the funding for dissemination and colaborative working coming from a number of research projects.

Millenium: 1-1-2009 ==> 31-12-2010. As the town survived the first three years, B3C decided to start a new phase that should make Biomed Town indefinitely self-sustainable. The actions we are undertaking are:

• negotiate with projects funded under the VPH program of the European Commission, the key integrative research action in Europe, some support for Biomed Town. So far only projects were B3C is partner have been invited. In Q4-2009 we plan to invite all other VPH projects to contribute. A supporters page will be created to disclose the sources of funding.
• Develop added-value services with a pay-per-use model that can provide financial support to Biomed Town operations. The first of these services will be PhysiomeSpace, which is currently in beta, and should be operated on a commercial basis starting from Q2/2010.
• Explore the possibility to raise additional funding through Internet adds. While the specialistic nature of the community does now favour this approach, there might be a possibility to raise some resources also in this way.