Vall d'Hebron will make virtual copies of organs to test treatments before applying them

BarcelonaIn the hospitals of the future, there will be specific treatments for each patient, adapted to their characteristics and needs, which will allow for the improvement of their prognosis and quality of life. This is what is known as personalized medicine, a goal that scientists around the world have been pursuing for years through research and that is increasingly being translated into clinical practice. The better a disease is understood, the more specific and effective the treatments that are developed. One of the ways to advance this personalization is to simulate the progression of diseases and predict how each patient will respond to treatments before they are administered.

Now, Vall d'Hebron Hospital is taking a step in this direction: it will develop a technology that will allow the creation of personalized virtual replicas of organs, systems, and biological processes based on real patient data. These virtual models, known as human digital twins, will reproduce the functioning of an organ or the evolution and behavior of a disease or an organ and will allow for the simulation of different therapeutic scenarios.

The hospital already has a 3D technology unit, from which highly complex operations are planned and personalized anatomical models are developed. Now, the Barcelona center will leverage this experience to advance towards the development of human digital twins. The clinical director of Radiodiagnostics at Vall d'Hebron Hospital, Manel Escobar, explains that digital twins have predictive capacity: they can anticipate how a patient will evolve or what effects a treatment may cause before it is applied in reality. "It must be a support for clinical decisions," asserts the expert. According to the hospital, this is a unique project in Europe funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Plan and promote

Among the applications to be developed are the creation of digital twins of the heart's electrical activity in pediatric patients, the early detection of heart diseases from electrocardiograms, and the development of new treatments for migraine. There is also an intention to create models that allow for the planning of interventions such as ablation to treat cases of ventricular tachycardia, percutaneous pulmonary valve implantation, and the removal of liver tumors.

Over the next three years, advanced computational models will be developed for various medical and surgical specialties with the goal of "taking personalized medicine to a new level," as claimed by the hospital. To make this possible, Vall d'Hebron will establish agreements with technology companies to jointly develop these computational models and the associated digital solutions. The goal is not only to incorporate existing technology, but to drive innovation hand-in-hand with the technology sector and accelerate its application in clinical practice to improve patient care.