Xplore Health

Xplore Health is a European project, coordinated by Barcelona Science Park to build and promote an online portal on the latest health research.

The portal will contain multimedia tools for public engagement, and will be linked to activities in science centres, museums and schools, that will nurture public engagement with health research and its wider ethical, legal and social aspects. Project partners are Barcelona Science Park, Ecsite, European Schoolnet, Centre of the Cell and Ubach Munné y Asociados. The project duration is 32 months.

Modules of the website will be published every three months, each module covering a different subject. Use of Web 2.0 tools will stimulate direct feedback from users as well as the submission of new contents by qualified scientists and press officers. Throughout the project, activities will be organised in schools and museums around Europe in parallel with an intense promotion at European level.

Tools developed by the project will include:

• Videos: where an introduction to the health issue will be made, with background information together with state-of-the-art research contents facilitated through interviews with European researchers.
• Eight new dialogue games: These tools introduce policymaking as a process where different choices and options are available. Through dialogue and listening to different points of view the participants realise the complexity of policymaking. Eight new games will be designed for the project, and translated into various languages.
• Experiment protocols describing an experiment which will be developed in different open labs in Europe, inviting the public to participate in state-of-the-art European research.
• Virtual experiments: an opportunity for the user to virtually recreate current research experiments and to get an understanding of what research is.
• Animations to explain projects and scientific principles with interactive graphics,
• Educational packs which will be developed in such a way that even audiences outside the educational community may use them.