Digital twins are computational models of physical objects or processes, updated using data from their real-world counterparts. Within medicine, this means combining vast amounts of data about the workings of genes, proteins, cells and whole-body systems with patients' personal data to create virtual models of their organs - and eventually, potentially their entire body.
"If you practise medicine today, a lot of it isn't very scientific," said Prof Peter Coveney, the director of the Centre for Computational Science at University College London and a co-author of Virtual You. "Often, it is equivalent to driving a car and working out where to go next by looking in the rear-view mirror: you try to figure out how to treat the patient in front of you based on people you've seen in the past who had similar conditions.
"What a digital twin is doing is using your data inside a model that represents how your physiology and pathology is working. It is not making decisions about you based on a population that might be completely unrepresentative. It is genuinely personalised."
The current state-of-the-art model can be found in cardiology.
この記事は The Guardian の November 13, 2023 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は The Guardian の November 13, 2023 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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