I am providing this via the Wiki due to links and details best provided in this format.

I am the President Elect of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH) (www.ssih.org), and lead the Research & Technology Committee for the National Modeling & Simulation Coalition (NMSC) (www.thenmsc.org).  I run the Sim Center at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, VA.

The NMSC creates an opportunity to capture insight into modeling and simulation needs, challenges, gaps, and issues through annual meetings and continued discussion.  The insights captured are provided, as potential congressional language, to leaders of the Congressional Modeling and Simulation Caucus.  As I'm sure everyone knows, the two main things that Congress does is pass laws and allocate federal resources.  The language provided by the NMSC can be helpful to ensure our Congressional leaders know about opportunities for scientific and commercial progress that may otherwise be lost in the noise. 

I encourage members of IMAG, MSM, and all sim-related or sim-interested organizations and societies to become involved in the NMSC.  Note that the NMSC is not a lobbying organization; it was formed seven years ago to help provide these insights to the Caucus.

This is perhaps one additional way to encourage Federal funding.

Another opportunity to work with a like-minded organization is with the Society for Simulation in Healthcare  

The purpose of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare is to serve a global community of practice enhancing the quality of healthcare. 

SSH seeks to improve performance and reduce errors in patient care through the use of simulation.  Established in 2004 by professionals using simulation for education, testing, and research in health care, SSH membership includes physicians, nurses, allied health and paramedical personnel, researchers, educators and developers from around the globe.  SSH fosters the improvement and application of simulation–based modalities such as human patient simulators, virtual reality, standardized patients and task trainers.  The Society has over 4,000 members, and continues to grow.

Recognizing that simulation represents a paradigm shift in health care education, SSH promotes improvements in simulation technology, educational methods, practitioner assessment, and patient safety that promote better patient care and can improve patient outcome.  There is an opportunity to broaden this focus based upon the needs of the members and relationships with affiliated organizations and societies.

A major venue for advancing simulation in medicine is the International Meeting for Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH), which occurs in January, annually.

SSH welcomes ties with other organizations interested in patient simulation as well as companies providing simulation technology.  

Please contact me at armstrrk@evms.edu if you are interested in discussing how your organization might form a relationship with SSH.

Founding Supporters of SSH:

• Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF) 
• Duke University
• Society for Technology in Anesthesia (STA)
• Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC)
• University of Miami Center for Research in Medical Education

Has there been an analysis of which NIH study sections have funded multi-scale modeling grants outside the IMAG MSM consortium? As noted by the panelists, MABS reviews many multi-scale modeling grants, but I'm curious what the distribution looks like more widely.

Model validation came up again as a topic, but it sounds like there is significant contention in how that is defined and some who feel a model can never truly be "validated." If this contention exists within the modeling community that act as reviewers of proposals, are there any suggestions/guidance as to how this topic should be addressed within a proposal?

Could the panelists discuss how potential ethical implications of data collection methods like monitoring teenagers' phone usage (text messages, music choices, etc.) are factored into this research? e.g., if these analysis techniques are shown to be highly effective, how can they be widely implemented in a way that is not seen as highly intrusive.

What is the opinion of the panel on non blind public review? If regulations would allow it, would any of the panel members will publicly sign on their review as a sign of taking responsibility?

As long as MABS and other modeling focused  review panels are the primary funding route it seems unlikely that modeling will become a mainstream research tool at nih. How do we get modelers on EVERY review panel in EVERY nih institute?

This is a comment regarding Dr. Giroux's current statement: The emphasis on disease process/problem/outcome focus by the NIH is a considerable limitation; it prevents the scalability of technological development that address fundamental limtations across the entire domain spectrum of biomedical research. When these methods are necessarily embedded in the context of a particular disease application there is an intrinsic tendency to focus the development of the method to that problem, and limits the applicability of that method across diseases. This is an inefficiency both in terms of how the grants are written as well as the actual development and dissemination of these tools/methods. Computational multiscale modeling, in particular, is a victim of this dynamic. I'm willing to expand at the mic (obviously!)

In fact, this may not be the appropriate venue, but I would suggest that there be specific calls that emhpasize method development were it is a necesary component that the application cross two disease domains.