Heart disease is still a major killer, especially in the western world, but new therapies based on stem cells and other techniques could now be imminent. Progress is being held back however by the difficulty testing new therapies on human heart tissue, with animal models being only of limited value owing to differences in structure and activity. The only solution in the absence of real human models is to create computerised “in-silico” models that simulate the real heart and enable possible drugs and therapies to be tested without risk to people. Although this is still some way off becoming a reality, substantial progress has been made, and the next steps were plotted at a major workshop held recently by the European Science Foundation (ESF).