Towards grid services for a virtual research environment

VOEU is a virtual university which we designed, implemented and deployed in the Wessex Region of the UK for use by higher surgical trainees in the orthopaedic domain. A particularly original part of this virtual university is the virtual research environment (VRE) which provides the infrastructure to support trainee surgeons in carrying out and publishing research and clinical trails. The current implementation of the VRE is tightly coupled, but we are now engaged in a new project to redeploy the VRE as loosely coupled grid services. This paper describes the VRE, and discusses the advantages that will be achieved by implementing it as grid services.