VPH FET calls all hands
In 2006 the STEP support action gave birth to the VPH initiative, which is now running full-throttle primarily through projects funded by the "ICT for Health" unit. One of the strategic indications included in the VPH Research roadmap was that, ideally, other parts of the FP7 programme should start to include topics relevant to VPH. Following STEP, we did some preliminary exploration, presenting the VPH vision to multiple units, and we found some attention from the FET-Proactive unit.
In the general assembly organised by the VPH NoE in 2009, it was agreed that having a FET component in the VPH would, indeed, be very useful, as FET traditionally funds blue-sky, visionary technological research, and we all recognised that the VPH has this component in it.
This was pursued in two parallel directions: a group elaborated a proposal for the so-called FET Flagship exploratory actions, which was submitted in late 2010 but, as we heard a few months ago, unfortunately this was not successful. A little earlier, we had submitted a proposal for a small support action, lasting 12 months, with the aim of elaborating on and extending the VPH research roadmap by specifically targeting blue-sky technological research elements within the VPH vision. The proposal, with the acronym VPH-FET, was awarded funding and started in September 2010. Given the small budget and the short time available, VPH-FET is organised around a very compressed work plan:
- December 2010: VPH-FET meeting: from the meeting, 28 candidate topics were proposed for further discussion.
- January 2011 to mid June 2011: discussion on these topics via the VPH-FET forum hosted on Biomed Town, with the purpose of drafting early chapters of the roadmap, one for each topic.
- 27 June 2011: VPH-FET conference, final discussion on the topic documents.
- Until 31 August 2011: completion of the VPH-FET research roadmap from the topic documents.
- Until 30 September 2011: type setting, proof-reading and printing of the final roadmap.
At the URL below you will find a table that summarises the on-line discussion so far. To date, only 84 experts have subscribed to the VPH-FET forum, and only a handful of these are actively participating to the discussion. To give you a reference, the final VPH roadmap had over 300 participants to the discussion, and that was when the VPH community was infinitely smaller than today.
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPHFET/reception/threads_calendar/
As a result, of 16 topics posted, only three of the discussions have so far produced enough material to elaborate a draft topic document. Five topics were killed at the outset because they had considerable overlap with other topics, and five more have been killed because of the lack of interest among experts, even including the people who spoke in favour of these topics at the December meeting. For eight, the decision is still pending, but judging from the intensity of the on-line debate, most likely many will be killed as well. Also the number of pre-registrations to the June meeting is not great so far. If this continues for the next two months, our attempt to open new funding opportunities under FET will certainly fail.
This is why we are calling on all hands. It is necessary that we all act immediately. Please join in, and make sure all your partners, all your colleagues, and all your staff do the same. To get involved in the VPH-FET discussion is very simple, just follow the instructions you find here:
http://www.biomedtown.org/VPHFET/reception/participate/.
Gordon Clapworthy
Marco Viceconti
VPH-FET support action