Virtual Humans

A European project called the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) is designed to foster, harmonize and integrate pan-European research in the field of patient-specific computer models for personalized and predictive healthcare and ICT-based tools for modeling and simulation of human physiology and disease-related processes.

It plans a simulation of human organs and new knowledge extraction, methods. The idea is to end of animal testing and eventually even clinical patient drug trials.

There are 13 institutions involved in the VPH initiative and it will allow a wide range of academic, clinical, and industrial researchers to investigate the human body as a single complex system. They will be able to use the VPH network's expanding database of computer simulation data to develop better diagnosis and treatment methods, including using mathematical modelling to suggest solutions to currently unsolved biomedical problems.

The Virtual Physiological Human is an initiative that's being funded with 72 million Euros ($100 mil) by the EU. It could revolutionize medical science in the 21st century. It's expected that substantial advances in this field will be made during the next ten years in a range of diseases, from cancer to others. Can you imagine what the US could accomplish if we didn't have to spend an additional $1.6 Trillion on political healthcare issues?