Stakeholder workshop on the Human Digital Twin organized by the European Commission

The event has the main goals:

• identify the status quo in the development and use of Digital Twins in Healthcare,
• understand ambitious yet realistic objectives for the next two to five years, and
• discuss potential step forwards.

The workshop combined short presentations provided by outstanding thought-leaders followed by open discussions. More than 80 participants representing various stakeholder groups such as industry, academia, regulators, physicians and patients’ organizations, participated at the workshop. Prof. Marco Viceconti (former executive director and president of the VPHi) and Prof. Liesbet Geris (current executive director) were asked to provide an overview of the history of the field and its current challenges. Also Secretary General of the Avicanna Alliance, Thierry Marchal, was on the speaker list.   

The human digital twin’s working definition is strongly aligned with that the virtual physiological human with an additional focus on personlisation: “the direct use of individual-specific models for the prevention, prediction, screening, diagnosis and treatment of a disease, as well as the evaluation, optimization, selection and personalisation of intervention options”

The key discussion points of the workshop include the following:

• Need for enhancing the inclusive interdisciplinary EU ecosystem, linking all actors and stakeholders relevant to the human digital twin and providing the necessary resources.
• Need for a staged approach to realizing the HDT, clearly mapping common denominators, building on smaller pieces and work streams, to later-on compose the whole view.
• Need to embed the HDT in the European Health Da Space, to properly benefit each other.
• Need to establish a clear regulatory framework, i.e. to enable the market authorization process.