The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) White Paper

The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) is a methodological and technological framework that aims to integrate biomedical research conducted at different scales of the human body's physiology, and contribute to the growth of personalised illness prediction and treatment. The core of this framework comprises model and physiological data repositories, methods, tools and services available to researchers. The two main research challenges the VPH community aims to address are the development of human physiology models that integrate processes at molecular, cell, tissue, and organ level, and of datasets that support the operation of these models. To meet these challenges, key requirements this community has identified include the growth and management of populated physiological databases, and the development of standards to encode and validate models, thus enabling their use in the VPH, genetic and pharmaceutical research communities.