Professor Greg Slabaugh, Director of DERI and Professor of Computer Vision, along with researchers from across Queen Mary is part of a consortium of 19 partners that will aid personalised healthcare by using virtual copies of objects
EDITH (Ecosystem for Digital Twins in Healthcare) Coordination and Support Action (CSA) is a project aimed at fostering an inclusive ecosystem for digital twins in healthcare in Europe and is a partnership of 19 internationally renowned research institutions, processional association, companies and hospitals of excellence.
EDITH aims to map and analyse the status of the fields which are necessary for the growth, uptake, and use of digital twins in healthcare, with the vision for the integrated human digital twin being developed, and a roadmap to realise this vision being articulated.
A digital twin is a virtual copy of a real-life object, which in this project could be a patient’s body or hospital layout, built using computer models. It offers a risk-free setting to test a large number of treatments, with the potential to lead to better real-world treatment and improved patient care.
EDITH will provide a space for various European communities to collaborate and share knowledge and practices. Ultimately, this will lead to an interconnected system between key players and a repository of digital twins and a simulation platform.
Dr Caroline Roney, Lecturer in Computational Medicine at Queen Mary University of London and EDITH member, said: “I’m excited to be a part of this pioneering project which offers real promise. The world is waking up to how revolutionary personalised medicine can be if made widely available, and the work we will do will help us to realise the opportunities in front of us.
“Virtual twins will benefit everyone from patients to doctors and industry. Better treatment, better-run hospitals, and support for healthcare workers are just a few of the many rewards.”
Liesbet Geris, Professor at the University of Liège and KU Leuven in Belgium, executive director of the VPH Institute and coordinator of the EDITH project, described the ecosystem the projects aims to create as “an unprecedented opportunity allowing the realization of an integrated digital twin for personalised healthcare.”
The project is led by the Virtual Physiological Human Institute (VPH Institute), with 5 million Euros in funding provided by the European Commission.
The Queen Mary team is interdisciplinary, working across schools and institutes. This includes the School of Engineering and Materials Science (Dr Caroline Roney), the Digital Environment Research Institute and Electronic Engineering and Computer Science (Prof Greg Slabaugh), the William Harvey Research Institute (Prof Steffen Petersen, Dr Aaron Lee), and the Cardiovascular Devices Hub (Prof Anthony Mathur).
For more information about EDITH, please visit: https://www.edith-csa.eu/