Virtual Physiological Human

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According to the STEP research road map the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) is "a methodological and technological framework that once established will enable the investigation of the human body as a single complex system".

The term Virtual Physiological Human refers to a framework of technologies and methods that are making it possible to develop shared resources formed by federations of disparate but integrated computer models of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of a living human body in both healthy and pathological states. This goal is coherent with those established by the international Physiome Project.

VPH models are both descriptive and predictive. They are formed by large collections of anatomical, physiological, and pathological data stored in digital format, by predictive simulations developed from these collections, and by services intended to support researchers in the creation and maintenance of these models. They also include services intended to facilitate clinical, industrial, and public use of the VPH resource. This makes VPH particularly relevant for the biomedical and pharmaceutical industry, and more generally for all those industrial domains that deal with the "Body Industry".

VPH models span multiple dimensional scales, from the whole body down to cells and the proteins they synthesise. They account for inter-subject variability and make possible the combination of patient-specific data with population-based representations.

VPH models are implemented as computer models and services, designed according to community standards to enable the exchange of information and to realise a developmental process based on the federation of the various partial representations, each already useful by itself, into what should one day become an exhaustive representation of functions of the human body.

The new technologies specifically developed to pursue the VPH are known as "VPH technology".