Raphael Thys
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The cardiovascular disease, pulmonary arterial hypertension, affects around 6,500 people in the UK
Researchers from Imperial College London (ICL), the Alan Turing Institute and the Universities of Sheffield and Nottingham are aiming to develop and test the first-ever ‘digital twin’ heart models for chronically ill NHS pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) patients to determine whether they provide better monitoring and better care.
The CVD-Net project is supported by £8m in funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, as well as further funding support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre.
Affecting around 6,500 people in the UK, PAH is a life-threatening cardiovascular disease that causes severe breathlessness, heart failure and recurrent hospitalisation.
The team aims to design and build accurate virtual copies of patients’ hearts using health data such as medical records, hospital scans and information from wearable and implanted monitors, which will be continuously updated by real-time data.
Engineers, clinicians, computational statisticians and research engineers will work collaboratively to access data and build the digital infrastructure, while working closely with patients, doctors and stakeholders to advance its usability and accuracy.
Researchers hope that the digital twin hearts will help to accurately track and assess changes to each patient’s disease progression and responses to treatment, enabling personalised predictions.
In addition, the project will determine whether the use of the digital twin heart models in the NHS patient care pathways is feasible, scalable and affordable.
Professor Steven Niederer, co-director of Digital Twins, Alan Turing Institute and chair in biomedical engineering, ICL National Heart and Lung Institute, commented: “We want to use this technology to better forecast when patients are likely to feel better or worse, or likely to have a health problem, or when their medication is working and when it isn’t.”
In 2023, the Alan Turing Institute launched its own digital twin’s initiative, the Turing Research and Innovation Cluster (TRIC-DT), to improve access to emerging digital twin technology for development and deployment as a national service.