The Economist February 29th, 2029 pp62-63 Science & Technology Cardiology “The heart’s digital twin” “How virtual copies of patients’ hearts could help doctors diagnose and treat cardiac disease”.
On your next flight, be reassured that on the ground there are virtual copies of each jet engine powering your flight. Called a “digital twin” its information is continually updated to reflect the current operating parameters for the onboard engine allowing “engineers to service engines as and when needed”. Fast forward and imagine a digital twin for your own beating heart.
Using advanced sensors and smartphones, biomedical engineers envision a similar process where incoming information paired with “specialized software” would simulate your heart function. Using these data caregivers will be aided in diagnosing emerging concerns and in monitoring response to treatment. Unobtrusive wearable fields of sensors would be used adding the advantages of a large set of sensors that are continually evaluating the patient in their own dynamic environment whether they are sleeping or climbing stairs etc
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“Wearable heart scanners are several years away” but some elements of a digital twin are likely in the near term. Currently, a company called EurValve is evaluating the use of computer algorithms with inputs from patient records, including test data, scans and Philips health-tracking watch, to “model the severity of [heart] disease and predict the outcome of heart-valve replacement surgery”. With time, enough individual case data will allow machine learning and artificial intelligence to more easily identify patterns in diagnosis and simulation.
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