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.

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 afiliation to a division, department, laboratory, course etc. within that institution clerly related to biomedical research & technology. If your application does not fully match these criteria, it will be rejected.

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.

Launch Scheduling

Biomed Town is operated by the BioComputing Competence Centre The launch of Biomed Town will follow three separate phase:

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 will be supported by the funding for dissemination and colaborative working coming from a number of research projects. The exchange of resources will be organised mostly around a barter model: each new user will start with some credit, but will be allowed to increase its credit only by sharing some resources of his or her own. The City Managers will collect nominal fees on the transactions, that will be used to generate credit for new users.

Millenium: 1-1-2009 ==> If the city will survive the next three years, and if the indicators will suggest that a self-sustainable business model can be realised, the BioComputing Competence Centre will start to operate Biomed Town on a commercial basis. Currently the idea is to leave the membership opean and free, and to charge only a small transaction fee when resources are bought.