Rolling out the openCARP simulator as a sustainable e-research infrastructure: CARPe-diem

• Applicants: Privatdozent Dr.-Ing. Axel Loewe; Dr.-Ing. Michael Selzer
• Subject Area: Bioinformatics and Theoretical Biology ; Biomedical Systems Technology ; Cardiology, Angiology ; Medical Physics, Biomedical Technology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 507828355

openCARP is an e-Research Technology for modeling and simulation of cardiac electrophysiology. This e-Research infrastructure was made freely and openly available as part of the SuLMaSS project and has been very well received by the international community, which now includes several hundred users. Through this convergence process, openCARP is the most widely used simulation software for cardiac electrophysiology. openCARP is supported by technical infrastructure for testing, versioning, archiving, and referencing developed and tested during SuLMaSS. The openCARP software lifecycle management has been documented and has already impacted the field of research software. The follow-up project CARPe- diem will provide the openCARP simulator as a virtual research environment for the international community in sustainable operation mode and further optimize it to consolidate this e-Research Technology. CARPe-diem has four goals: i) Advance, consolidate, and provide the openCARP cardiac electrophysiology simulator as a virtual and collaborative research environment to the national and international scientific community to support research also across institutions. ii) Further increase adoption of openCARP and convergence in the community through optimized usability, tailored training and targeted dissemination. iii) Strengthen the openCARP user and developer community through interactive online infrastructure, active community management and focused in person events. iv) Further increase sustainability and reduce maintenance effort for long-term operation of the openCARP virtual research environment. To achieve these goals, measures in the following three areas will be implemented in close collaboration between researchers and information infrastructure experts: i) usability (e.g., extending functionality according to user needs, expanding documentation, optimizing user interfaces, supporting additional platforms), ii) user community (e.g., non-supervised training, user meetings, active community management), and iii) sustainability (e.g., expansion of the test suite, platform for sharing openCARP experiments, adaptation to new technologies, continuous benchmarking). In summary, CARPe- diem will provide the cardiac research community with the high-quality openCARP e-Research Infrastructure and further enhance it based on the open science principles along with support and training to facilitate knowledge exchange and support high quality research.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• International Connection: Austria, France
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Arne Upmeier
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Gernot Plank; Dr. Edward Vigmond