The VPH Network of Excellence (VPH NoE) is designed to foster, harmonise and integrate pan-European research in the field of patient-specific computer models for personalised and predictive healthcare.

The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) is a methodological and technological framework that, once established, will enable collaborative investigation of the human body as a single complex system. The collective framework will make it possible to share resources and observations formed by institutions and organisations creating disparate, but integrated structural and functional models of the living human body. This system will enable academic, clinical and industrial researchers to improve their understanding of human physiology and pathology, to derive predictive hypotheses and simulations, develop and test new therapies, with the eventual outcome of better disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention tools in healthcare.

The VPH NoE will play a part in strengthening and supporting increased interdisciplinarity and integration of European biomedical research. This is to be achieved by fostering cooperation between disciplines and institutions.

The following aims will be addressed:

• Creation of a more cohesive VPH research community,within and beyond the EU
• Enhanced recognition at a national level of the importance of modelling and simulation in biomedicine
• Increased emphasis on interdisciplinary training in both biological and biomedical-engineering physics curricula