A Grid Services Implementation for a Virtual Research Environment

In the past, virtual learning and research environments have typically been implemented as monolithic systems. Current research focuses on creating such environments from selected Grid and Web services. In this paper we describe the Virtual Orthopaedic European University, which was created to support Higher Surgical Trainees to provide evidence for their learning contracts by carrying out experiments and publishing the results. We use this environment as a case study for the reimplementation of this system as a set of Web services, and we discuss the advantages of taking such an approach.