twinning
Generating virtual body parts is very nice, but the human body functions as a whole. That’s why the grand scheme of digital twins includes replicas of entire people. “In the long run, your whole body will feel great,” says El-Bouri.
That may not be that far off. Various research teams have already built models of the heart, brain, lungs, kidneys, liver, musculoskeletal system, blood vessels, immune system, eyes, ears, and more. “If you were to bring together all the research groups in the world that are currently working on digital twins, I think you would be able to bring them together,” El-Bouri said. “I think some people are even studying the tongue,” he added.
The challenge is bringing together all the different researchers with different approaches and different codes involved in creating and using the models, El-Bouri says. “Everything exists,” he says. “It becomes a matter of putting it together.”
In theory, such full-body twins could revolutionize medicine. Trayanova envisions a future where digital twins are just part of a person’s medical record and can be used by doctors to make treatment decisions.
“Technically, if someone tries hard enough, we might be able to find out who that person is through scans and twin organs.”
Wabi El Bouli
But El-Bouly says the idea has received mixed reactions. Some people find that “really exciting, really cool,” he said. But he also met people who strongly opposed the idea that a virtual copy of himself existed somewhere on his computer. “They don’t want any part of it.” Researchers need to do more to engage with the public to find out how they feel about the technology, he said. say.
There are also concerns about patient autonomy. If doctors can access a patient’s digital twin and use it to guide medical decisions, where does the patient’s own voice fit in? Some of those working on creating digital twins are Some say it could reveal whether a patient took their medication each day or what they ate that week. Will clinicians eventually come to view digital twins as a more reliable source of information than people’s self-reports?
Mathias Braun, a social ethicist at Germany’s University of Bonn, said doctors should not be allowed to ignore patients and just “ask the machines.” “The absence of informed consent violates autonomy and can cause harm,” he says. After all, we are not machines with broken parts. Two people with the same diagnosis can have very different experiences and lead very different lives.