An ecosystem for digital twins in healthcare

Outcomes and deliverables

• a consolidated European ecosystem around digital twins for healthcare that brings together, streamlines, bundles and fosters their use across stakeholders in a coordinated manner, thereby empowering patients and enabling health professionals, pharmaceutical and medical devices industries, SMEs, software developers, academia and regulatory agencies to make use of DTH in full compliance with applicable data protection requirements;
• a roadmap for the development of a strategic approach to accelerate the uptake of DTH-based solutions and for further integrating the resources towards a comprehensive virtual representation of the human body;
• a governance framework for a federated, cloud-based repository, combining DTH resources, as well as the subsequent use and deployment of the repository;
• the blueprint and technical specifications for a simulation platform for DTHs, and early prototypes.

The development of digital twins in healthcare (DTH) has progressed substantially, profiting from advances in science and technology. In order to exploit their benefits in view of better prevention approaches, faster and more accurate diagnoses, personalised treatments and care, a framework to structure cooperation and leverage on synergies between academia, private sector, regulators and end-users needs to be strengthened.

The objective is to support the roll-out of DTH by mapping and structuring the ecosystem within the EU Member States and associated countries to identify and pool existing resources, and foster collaboration and overall integration of the stakeholders, while ensuring adequate clinical representation. This will be facilitated through a roadmap, a federated repository connecting resources and a simulation platform.

The Coordination and Support action will:

• map and link the actors and initiatives on DTH, develop a blueprint of and foster an inclusive ecosystem to share knowledge and facilitate understanding between developers, users, and decision-makers throughout the relevant sectors. This will include support for designing a ‘roadmap’ in view of both the uptake of DTH, and their further integration towards a comprehensive digital twin of the entire human body, taking into consideration different stakeholder groups, identifying the needs of end-users, determining the necessary enabling infrastructure and considering a framework for the deployment of digital companions;
• coordinate the deployment of a federated, cloud-based repository of DTH, inter alia by pooling existing digital twins in healthcare (incl. models, methods, datasets), gathering and analysing best practices, and identifying relevant technological standards, recommendations and/or guidelines geared towards quality assessment;
• develop and employ technical specifications and operational prototypes for a simulation platform allowing practitioners to design, create, test and validate digital twins in healthcare, linked also to high performance computing infrastructures.

Implementation: European Commission