Virtual laboratories help coordinate fight against AIDS

The battle to prevent the spread of AIDS and similar viral diseases is being supported thanks to virtual laboratories that enable international collaboration in an electronic world.

ViroLab is an initiative due to be brought online by the end of the year and sees real-world laboratories around the world linked through a shared virtual research environment.

As part of this environment, patients located thousands of miles apart can be compared to determine the most likely effective course of treatment for an individual.

This is also guided by the system's database archive, which crawls research from around the planet and aggregates it in a semantic way to enable medication to be prescribed based on the latest available information.

ViroLab's developers anticipate three major audiences for its services, including computer scientists accessing its database for research purposes, commercial users guiding their own development and medical scientists making use of its primary function as a treatment guide.