Collaborating for Digital Health and Care in Europe

A webinar on virtual human digital twins was organised by EHTEL in collaboration with the COMFORTage project. Its focus was on the ways in which digital health twins can assist in improving prediction and prevention in the health and care fields. 

What are virtual digital twins?

Digital twins are precise digital replicas of physical entities such as patients, medical devices, or biological systems. These digital models are continuously updated with real-time data and can simulate various processes, predict outcomes, and support decision-making in healthcare. Digital twins hold significant promise for transforming healthcare, including management and delivery, disease prediction, prevention and treatment, and health well-being maintenance, ultimately improving human life. What is key? Continued research, technological advancements, and collaborative efforts – like ecosystems and data sharing platforms – are essential to achieve the potential of this technology. 

What was the webinar about? 

Read a complete webinar report, offering an in-depth look at the presentations and topics covered during the discussion, in the Resources section below ⤵️

👀 Watch the webinar recording to access all of the knowledge shared during the presentations: 

What did the speakers say?

• Margherita FANOS, Policy Officer, European Commission: The EU strategic viewpoint

Ms FANOS described the European Virtual Human Twins Initiative, which aims to advance the emergence and adoption of the next generation of virtual human twins solutions in health and care. She detailed how virtual twins can be used, in the health and care fields, to assist e.g., European leadership, the work of healthcare professionals, drug discovery, personalised medicine, medical education and training, and medical research. The European Union is working hard to strengthen these approaches, including through a Manifesto. In terms of what she called “the last mile”, she emphasised the importance of integrated technologies working on clinical concerns like cancer, cardiology, mental health, and preventive medicine as well as the Commission’s desire that, overall, current and future initiatives should be inclusive in their approach. 

• Frank RADEMAKERS, former CMO & CMTO UZ KU Leuven: The clinician viewpoint

As a cardiologist, Professor RADEMAKERS, offered his clinical viewpoint on digital twins. His talk covered plenty of areas of literature, history, and documentation. A number of problems can be alleviated by digital twins. A first example offered was that of the DestineE platform that mimics a replica of planet earth. Indeed, in 2023, the European Commission launched an initiative on virtual worlds. In the health field, many unsolved challenges remain, however: unmet needs; rapidly increasing demand for care; scarcity of resources and health staff; a lack of diagnoses; under-use of preventive medicine; and data overload. Why not search therefore for “achievable health” based on/around “re-usable data”? Beyond data, information, and knowledge, the search is now on for “real wisdom and impact.” Scientifically, Professor Rademakers showed a considerable interest in deep digital phenotyping. Pragmatically, however, he pointed out that - far less than intellectual/conceptual understanding - what often “nudges” people to act positively behaviourally in terms of their health, are often feelings or emotions. 

• Frank EMMERT-STEIB, Professor at the Predictive Society and Data Analytics Lab, Tampere University, Finland: The researcher viewpoint

Professor EMMETT-STREIB started his talk by offering a range of definitions of mirrored spaces and mirrored worlds, from 2005 onwards. Today, these domains are known as digital twins. His own work on digital twins has been in the field of data science. The talk looked back, historically, at the way in which the focus on virtual interventions/digital twins has been built up through earlier work on statistics, big data, and deep neural networks. If, as an example, a digital twin is used in pharmaceutical research it can permit a test drug to be tried out on a data model (as opposed to a live patient). 

• Stelios KOKKAS, Artificial Intelligence Researcher, CERTH: The developer viewpoint

Stelios KOKKAS, an engineer, is a member of a developer network that works on health digital twins. Areas of work include data aggregation, data modelling or simulations, artificial intelligence/machine learning, real-time data processing, and visualisation tools. In the health field, digital twins may help different categories of people to understand the health implications of various activities like breathing, diabetes, nutrition, and sleep. Internationally, not only is the European Union/European Commission working on digital twins but also e.g., global firms like Siemens Healthineers and smaller companies like California-based, TwinHealth. Mr Kokkas examined briefly various aspects of data (such as sources, data integration, data privacy and security, data modelling and simulation, and useful simulation sites and programming languages), as well as artificial intelligence (AI). AI use will, in the COMFORTage project, be tested in health fields like dementia and frailty in 13 pilots.

• Enzo FABIANI, Project manager of the Cooperation and Support Action  EDITH on Digital Twins in Healthcare: Pathways for increased collaboration of the value chain.

The EDITH coordination support action has spent two years working on digital twins. As the support action’s formal title suggests, the focus has been on fostering an inclusive ecosystem for digital twins in healthcare in Europe. This talk ranged over the barriers facing the use of digital twins in healthcare and what policymakers can do to tackle them. EDITH’s work has had many aspects: undertaking hackathons (‘modellathons’), designing a future roadmap, gathering use cases, strengthening crowdsourcing of data, and exploring value creation (and improved management of costs). It has also used a tool like Alex Osterwalder/Strategyzer’s business model canvas. EDITH’s priority has been on bringing added value from digital twins in the health field to the many stakeholders involved: European policymakers, hospitals and information technology departments, research laboratories and innovators, and regulatory and legal staff. Clearly, the ever-present hurdles need to be transformed into opportunities. 

Discussion

During the panel, various questions were posed to the speakers/panellists. They partly focused on the potential of a future European platform/ecosystem on digital health twins. They explored the relationship between digital twins and medical devices. They looked into predictions of future time horizons for the actual practical implementation of digital health twins, and their use in e.g., hospitals.

Watch the discussion video to learn more about these topics:

Overall themes and messages from the webinar

• Indicated the key actions supported by the European Commission in the context of the European Virtual Human Twins Initiative.
• Explored the history of virtual digital twins and how they have developed thanks to machine learning and big data, and are now evolving towards personalised medicine.
• Covered the use of this disruptive innovation in contexts such as cardiovascular diseases,  dementia, and frailty.
• Commented on how a large-scale project, like COMFORTage, can work when it forms part of an ecosystem.
• Highlighted how a dynamic ecosystem is a pre-requisite to move forward concrete European work on virtual human digital twins.

What is the COMFORTage project?

The COMFORTage project is a large-scale project that is focused on 13 pilots related to the prevention, monitoring, and offering of personalised recommendations on the prevention and relief of dementia and frailty. Key to its work is the use of AI. Learn more about EHTEL's role in COMFORTage.