Tuesday 6 December 2011

3rd VPH study group

The 3rd Virtual Physiological Human study group will take place in Barcelona between the 7th and 11th of May 2012. This is a great opportunity to get expert advice and guidance in biomedical modelling, and in particular on the VPH toolkit. The first day will consist of presentations from several experts in modelling, followed by the setting of several challenges. For the remainder of the study group, participants will work through the challenges and, in the process, gain valuable experience with modelling workflows. For more information, please click here. But hurry, as the closing date for application is 15th January 2012.

Project Description

The DISCIPULUS project began in October 2011 and will run until March 2013. It involves five public and private institutions from four European countries. The consultation process will include representatives from many more countries.

The DISCIPULUS project will:
  • Examine the state of play of research and innovation in the VPH community. It will describe and consolidate the achievements and capabilities of the different VPH projects, with a view to their clinical prediction applications.
  • Engage in consultation exercises with important stakeholders. This will include two large consultation meetings and several smaller workshops.
  • Produce a roadmap based on the consultation process for the future direction of the Digital Patient.
  • Identify and describe clinical and industrial scenarios in which the Digital Patient would be an effective decision-making tool.
  • Describe what could be achieved in the medium-term future (10 years).
  • Describe what technological advances are required for the realisation of the Digital Patient.
  • Establish what impact the Digital Patient will have on European society, industry and clinical practice.
  • Identify the external factors impacting on the realisation of the Digital Patient.

Objectives of the project

The management of many human health issues can be greatly improved by the application of accurate predictive models. There have been great advances in modelling of physiological processes in recent years, as the various Virtual Physiological Human initiatives show. One major step in utilising these advances will be to incorporate these models in a systematic way into the clinical decision-making process. There is also a need to make the clinical and research data available more effective through feedback for building better predictive models.
The main aims of the DISCIPULUS project are:
  • To consolidate the research and consultation carried out so far on the roles that predictive models might play in healthcare in the future. 
  • To capture and quantify the needs of relevant stakeholders: clinicians, patients, researchers and industry. 
  • To develop a vision and sound ICT research agenda around the Digital Patient.

The Digital Patient

The DISCIPULUS project aims at the grand challenge of the ‘Digital VPH Patient,’ in particular, to produce a roadmap for its realisation. The Digital Patient is a method of integrating diverse computational models and individual data to produce a computational patient avatar. This would allow revolutionary health prediction and disease treatment when the ‘Digital Me’ of a citizen needs to avail itself of health services.