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The Physiome Projects are a diverse set of scientifically independent projects addressing integrative systems physiology and biology, conducted by individual investigators and teams from different countries. The emphasis in these projects is on medically related physiology and pharmacology. They gather modeling work, information processing methods and tools, databases, and other resources and make them available to a large research community. Multiscale methods have been exploited in signal and image processing and in a wide range of other fields including biology, nanotechnology, materials, and aerodynamics. In this article, we present an overview of the status, accomplishments, and challenges of the Physiome Projects and outline the role played by multiscale modeling.

The analysis of multiple indicator dilution curves to estimate the rates of transport of ions and substrates across the sarcolemma of myocardial cells requires the formulation of models for the blood-ISF-cell exchanges. The fitting of models to the sets of experimental data is dependent of acquiring a large enough data set, in one physiological state, that there is at least as much information in the data as there are unknown model parameters to be determined. Since data are necessarily noisy, redundancy of data and overdetermination of the unknowns is highly desirable. Sensitivity functions are useful in demonstrating which portions of the data relate to which unknown parameters. They are also useful in adjusting model parameters to fit the model to the data, and therefore in parameter evaluation.

Today, the tools are in our hands to enable us to travel away from our home planet and become citizens of the solar system. Even now, we are seriously beginning to develop the robust infrastructure that will make the 21st century the Century of Space Travel. But this bold step must be taken with due concern for the health, safety and wellbeing of future space explorers. Our long experience with space biomedical research convinces us that, if we are to deal effectively with the medical and biomedical issues of exploration, then dramatic and bold steps are also necessary in this field. We can no longer treat the human body as if it were composed of muscles, bones, heart and brain acting independently. Instead, we must lead the effort to develop a fully integrated view of the body, with all parts connected and fully interacting in a realistic way. This paper will present the status of current (2000) plans by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute to initiate research in this area of integrative physiology and medicine. Specifically, three example projects are discussed as potential stepping stones towards the ultimate goal of producing a digital human. These projects relate to developing a functional model of the human musculoskeletal system and the heart.