The Consortium's April meeting was held in Paris on 9th April 2008.

A number of leading Academics in the field of Pharmacometrics were invited to the meeting to provide feedback on the Standards document.  The Consortium members also took the opportunity to invite them to collaborate with the Consortium and be an active part of the defining standards process. The details of their precise role and commitment will be formalised shortly. The Consortium members look forward to working with the Academics.

The meeting allowed the Consortium to restate it’s objectives and scope:

Objective

To address system interoperability

• Enable and facilitate a platform independent inter-operable framework that allows seamless interaction between various software tools that are currently used in isolation of each other

Scope

To encourage wide adoption of the Framework

• Gain support and input on this approach from industry, academics, regulatory, and service providers/software vendors
• Work with service providers/software vendors to prove the feasibility of this approach

To address consistency of definition through Standards

• Develop a comprehensive set of common M&S standards that enable the storage and system-to-system interchange of data, models and related metadata in the area of Pharmacometrics
• The interoperable framework will be an open source development
• The licensing for the interoperable framework will be free to use (e.g. GNU General Public License)

In support of its restated objective, the NLMEc is planning to apply for Public Funding (European Union Funding).

A 1-2 page proposal will be submitted by 11 April. If this short proposal is successful, a full proposal will be submitted by July.

The Consortium and the Academics will meet next in Paris on 6th May 2008