Virtual Physiological Human

According to the STEP research road map the Virtual Physiological Human (VHP) 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 indicates a framework of technologies and methods that will make possible to develop shared resources formed by federations of disparate but integrated computer models of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of living human body in both physiological and pathological conditions. This goal is coherent with those set 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 aimed to support the researchers in the creation and maintenance of these models. They also include services aimed to empower clinical, industrial and societal users in the use of the VPH resource. This makes VPH particularly relevant for biomedical industry, for pharmaceutical industry, and more in general for all those industrial domains that deal with the so-called 'Body Industry'.

VPH models span multiple dimensional scales (from the whole body down to the cells and the proteins they synthesise), account for the 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 following community standards that make possible to exchange information and to realise a developmental process based on the federation of the various partial representations, each already useful by itself, into what should become one day an exhaustive and complete representation of functions of the human body.

To create the VPH requires new technologies, specifically developed to pursue this scope; this is called VPH Technology.