Journal Article

Envisioning the Future of Personalized Medicine: Role and Realities of Digital Twins

Vallée, Alexandre

2024

Overview

Digital twins have emerged as a groundbreaking concept in personalized medicine, offering immense potential to transform health care delivery and improve patient outcomes. It is important to highlight the impact of digital twins on personalized medicine across the understanding of patient health, risk assessment, clinical trials and drug development, and patient monitoring. By mirroring individual health profiles, digital twins offer unparalleled insights into patient-specific conditions, enabling more accurate risk assessments and tailored interventions. However, their application extends beyond clinical benefits, prompting significant ethical debates over data privacy, consent, and potential biases in health care. The rapid evolution of this technology necessitates a careful balancing act between innovation and ethical responsibility. As the field of personalized medicine continues to evolve, digital twins hold tremendous promise in transforming health care delivery and revolutionizing patient care. While challenges exist, the continued development and integration of digital twins hold the potential to revolutionize personalized medicine, ushering in an era of tailored treatments and improved patient well-being. Digital twins can assist in recognizing trends and indicators that might signal the presence of diseases or forecast the likelihood of developing specific medical conditions, along with the progression of such diseases. Nevertheless, the use of human digital twins gives rise to ethical dilemmas related to informed consent, data ownership, and the potential for discrimination based on health profiles. There is a critical need for robust guidelines and regulations to navigate these challenges, ensuring that the pursuit of advanced health care solutions does not compromise patient rights and well-being. This viewpoint aims to ignite a comprehensive dialogue on the responsible integration of digital twins in medicine, advocating for a future where technology serves as a cornerstone for personalized, ethical, and effective patient care.

• Publisher: Journal of Medical Internet Research,Gunther Eysenbach MD MPH, Associate Professor,JMIR Publications
• Subject: Algorithms / Artificial intelligence / Cancer / Clinical assessment / Clinical outcomes / Clinical research / Clinical trials / Computational linguistics / Confidentiality - ethics / Delivery of Health Care - ethics / Delivery of Health Care - methods / Delivery of Health Care - trends / Digital health / Digital twins / Discrimination / Discrimination in medical care / Disease / Drug development / Electronic health records / Empowerment / Ethical aspects / Ethical dilemmas / Ethics / Forecasts and trends / Health aspects / Health care access / Health care delivery / Health care reform / Health risk assessment / Health services / Hospitals / Humans / Informed consent / Informed Consent - ethics / Innovations / Integrated care / Internet of Things / Language processing / Lifestyles / Machine learning / Medical conditions / Medical personnel / Medicine / Mirroring / Natural language interfaces / Ownership / Patients / Patients rights / Precision medicine / Precision Medicine - methods / Precision Medicine - trends / Privacy / Regulation / Risk assessment / Technology / Telemedicine / Treatment methods / Twins / Viewpoint / Wearable computers / Well being