The 5th edition of the VPH conference has successfully taken place in Zaragoza (Spain) under the local organization by the University of Zaragoza
The conference was held in Zaragoza from the 5th to the 7th of September, 2018 but it also included a number of interesting workshops during the week, just before/after the official scientific program.
The program encompassed a strong scientific part with excellent abstracts submitted and presented by the scientific community over the 3 conference days. Yet the real unique added value of the conference lied in the combination of the scientific program with a number of parallel activities organized with and by the key partners in the in silico medicine world: industry, regulators, funders.
The VPHi organised a special plenary session on the “Research priorities for in silico medicine”, bringing to the podium both Violeta Isabel Pérez Nueno, Programme Officer in charge of the in silico portfolio at Unit 3 - eHealth, Well-being & Ageing, DG CONNECT - European Commission, and Tina Morrison, Deputy Director of the Division of Applied Mechanics at the FDA, who presented the in silico medicine priorities on both sides of the Atlantic.
The session was followed by a VPHi member only information & networking event, where the Spanish National contact point, Dr. Juan Riese, discussed the details of the future calls for funding in the last Work Program of H2020, paying specific attention to the calls with opportunities for in silico medicine research.
On the second day of the conference, a plenary industry session on in silico trials was chaired by the Avicenna Alliance, that saw the participation of some of the major industry representatives of the Alliance such as Medtronic, Ansys, InSilicoTrials, Quibim, in combination with representatives from both the academic and regulatory world.
On the last day, as part of the conference’s post events, an ASME V&V40 workshop was held, introducing concepts and procedures for the standardization, verification and validation for computational modeling of medical devices.
“I particularly enjoyed the combination of academic, industrial and regulatory science. The meeting has highlighted that this is a very unique strength of the VPHi. I have heard very positive comments and I very much look forward to future events” sayd Blanca Rodriguez, one of our members from the University of Oxford.
“At the conference, we saw the participation of a broad range of stakeholders involved in the in silico medicine community. What came across strongly is that the one thing we all have in common is our ambition to develop and use computer modeling & simulation as an enabling technology in all aspects of the health – be it in prevention, diagnosis, prognostic assessment, treatment of a disease and development of biomedical products. We not only believe, but we are convinced that in silico models will play an important role in keeping our healthcare system itself in good health and events likes this conference are one of the major vehicles to keep the engine going” Liesbet Geris, VPHi executive director
We take the opportunity to warmly thank the local organizing committee, in particular Manuel García Aznar, María Ángeles Pérez Ansón, María José Gómez Benito and Tirso Ventura for the great work that has been done with the organization, and for giving us the opportunity to bring together such an important and diverse group of speakers and contributors.
The next conference will in Paris on 26-28 August 2020 with as local organizers Inria and partners. We all look forward to this important next event!
