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Digital Twins for Human Health

Patient-specific simulation is moving from engineering into medicine.

By Kimberley Vanessa Cheung · 10 min read · Subscribe to read full story

Main points — free preview

  • A digital twin in medicine is a computational model of a specific patient — built from imaging, genomics, and clinical data — used to simulate treatment responses before interventions are applied.
  • The FDA has issued guidance on computational modeling for medical devices, and researchers have published patient-specific cardiac and oncology twins — but clinical validation lags behind engineering demonstrations.
  • The gap between 'digital twin' marketing and regulator-ready evidence is wide: most health twins remain research prototypes, not tools that hospitals can deploy with known accuracy and liability frameworks.

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