The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) is European initiative that focuses on 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 organizations, creating disparate but integrated computer models of the mechanical, physical and biochemical functions of a living human body. VPH is a framework which aims to be descriptive, integrative and predictive. Clapworthy et al. state that the framework should be descriptive by allowing laboratory and healthcare observations around the world "to be collected, catalogued, organized, shared and combined in any possible way." It should be integrative by enabling those observations to be collaboratively analyzed by related professionals in order to create "systemic hypotheses." Finally, it should be predictive by encouraging interconnections between extensible and scalable predictive models and "systemic networks that solidify those systemic hypotheses" while allowing observational comparison. The framework is formed by large collections of anatomical, physiological, and pathological data stored in digital format, typically by predictive simulations developed from these collections and by services intended to support researchers in the creation and maintenance of these models, as well as in the creation of end-user technologies to be used in the clinical practice. VPH models aim to integrate physiological processes across different length and time scales (multi-scale modelling). These models make possible the combination of patient-specific data with population-based representations. The objective is to develop a systemic approach which avoids a reductionist approach and seeks not to subdivide biological systems in any particular way by dimensional scale (body, organ, tissue, cells, molecules), by scientific discipline (biology, physiology, biophysics, biochemistry, molecular biology, bioengineering) or anatomical sub-system (cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, etc.).
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