The 'Digital Twin' to enable the vision of precision cardiology

Jorge Corral-Acero, Francesca Margara, Maciej Marciniak, Cristobal Rodero, Filip Loncaric, Yingjing Feng, Andrew Gilbert, Joao F. Fernandes, Hassaan A. Bukhari, Ali Wajdan, Manuel Villegas Martinez, Mariana Sousa Santos, Mehrdad Shamohammdi, Hongxing Luo, Philip Westphal, Paul Leeson, Paolo DiAchille, Viatcheslav Gurev, Manuel Mayr, Liesbet GerisPras Pathmanathan, Tina Morrison, Richard Cornelussen, Frits Prinzen, Tammo Delhaas, Ada Doltra, Marta Sitges, Edward J. Vigmond, Ernesto Zacur, Vicente Grau, Blanca Rodriguez, Espen W. Remme, Steven Niederer, Peter Mortier, Kristin McLeod, Mark Potse, Esther Pueyo, Alfonso Bueno-Orovio, Pablo Lamata*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal(Systematic) Review article peer-review

Abstract

Providing therapies tailored to each patient is the vision of precision medicine, enabled by the increasing ability to capture extensive data about individual patients. In this position paper, we argue that the second enabling pillar towards this vision is the increasing power of computers and algorithms to learn, reason, and build the 'digital twin' of a patient. Computational models are boosting the capacity to draw diagnosis and prognosis, and future treatments will be tailored not only to current health status and data, but also to an accurate projection of the pathways to restore health by model predictions. The early steps of the digital twin in the area of cardiovascular medicine are reviewed in this article, together with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities ahead. We emphasize the synergies between mechanistic and statistical models in accelerating cardiovascular research and enabling the vision of precision medicine.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4556-4564
Number of pages11
JournalEuropean Heart Journal
Volume41
Issue number48
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Dec 2020

Keywords

  • ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE
  • Artificial intelligence
  • BIG DATA
  • BLOOD-FLOW
  • CT ANGIOGRAPHY
  • Computational modelling
  • Digital twin
  • HEART
  • INFORMATION
  • MEDICINE
  • PERFORMANCE
  • PRESSURE
  • Precision medicine
  • RISK
  • TRIAL
  • CHANNEL

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