The VPH-Physiome Project: Standards and Tools for Multiscale Modeling in Clinical Applications

The revolution in molecular biology over the past 50 years has given us an extraordinarily detailed parts list for life, but little understanding of how the parts integrate into the physiological function of the healthy and diseased human body. In contrast, the engineering sciences, from a detailed knowledge of its components, have successfully explained how a plane actually flies. The key difference is the use of mathematical models based on physical principles and a systematic approach to knowledge management. In this review, we describe the efforts of the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) Physiome Project to address the challenge of integrating molecular, cellular and tissue/organ structure and function through the use of multiscale modeling based on the development of community standards, open source tools and web-accessible databases. We illustrate two applications of the framework, one to cardiology and one to bone fracture prediction in the elderly.