Revolutionizing Healthcare

The Twin Within

Ever heard of a virtual human twin (VHT)? It’s a digital representation of a human health or disease state. They refer to different levels of human anatomy (e.g. cells, tissues, organs or organ systems). VHTs are built using software models and data and are designed to mimic and predict behavior of their physical counterparts, including interaction with additional diseases a person may have.

Digital tools are now a crucial part of our everyday lives, playing an essential role in helping us understand and manage our health. You can think of automatic insulin pumps for diabetes or the use of computer models to design personalized knee implants. These tools are often called personalized computer models, patient avatars, or digital twins. In ‘The Twin Within’, we will take you on a journey into building digital twins.

What technologies are behind them?

What are the benefits for personalized health and care?

And what ethical and social issues do they raise?

The event will be in English and is for anyone curious about technology and/in medicine. Liesbet Geris (Professor of Biomechanics and Computational Tissue Engineering at the University of Liege and KU Leuven) and Davide Montesarchio (Science Communicator at Virtual Physiological Human Institute) will lead the interactive session.

Learn more and attend the event on the 16^th of July. Register here: https://uvaforms.formstack.com/forms/the_twin_within

About the speakers

Liesbet Geris is Collen-Francqui Research Professor in Biomechanics and Computational Tissue Engineering at the university of Liège and KU Leuven in Belgium. Liesbet is scientific coordinator of the Prometheus platform for Skeletal Tissue Engineering, has edited several books on computational modeling and tissue engineering, has received 2 prestigious ERC grants. She is the current executive director of the Virtual Physiological Human Institute and in that capacity she advocates the use of in silico modeling in healthcare through liaising with the clinical community, the European Commission and Parliament, regulatory agencies and various other stakeholders.

Davide Montesarchio is a science journalist, podcaster, and communicator at the Virtual Physiological Human Institute (VPHi). After completing his degree in Genetic Technologies, he spent multiple years doing molecular biology research at Sabanci Universitesi in Istanbul and the Universiteit van Amsterdam. As a communicator, he hosted science radio shows at RAI, the Italian public broadcasting company, and is active in live science shows. As a podcaster, he published PONTEKORVO in 2023 and is currently producing a podcast for the VPHi on in silico medicine, The Digital Twin Theory.