Two Days to Explore the Virtual Human Twins Landscape: Insights from 21-22 October

  • 23 October 2025

Across two days, the Virtual Human Twins (VHT) agenda took center stage with a pair of dynamic events that bridged policy, regulation, technology, and real-world use cases.

 

21/10 — European Virtual Human Twins (VHT) Initiative: turning vision into practice

The European Virtual Human Twins (VHT) Initiative, launched in December 2023, explored how high-fidelity virtual models of individuals can accelerate medical innovation and bring personalised care closer to everyday practice. The initiative connects AI, secure health-data infrastructures (including the European Health Data Space), and Europe’s supercomputing capabilities, aligning with key Commission priorities such as the AI Continent Action Plan and the Apply AI and Life Sciences Strategies.

Discussions focused on the practical path to clinical adoption: using VHTs to simulate interventions, anticipate disease progression, and tailor treatments earlier and more precisely. The expected impact is better outcomes and greater efficiency by complementing or reducing conventional trial workloads.

Senior voices from the European Commission (DG CNECT, DG SANTE, DG RTD), public health organisations, and academia highlighted three essentials:

  • Data excellence and interoperability: high-quality, secure, and easily exchangeable data;
  • Trust, transparency, and ethics: building patient confidence and clear governance;
  • Skills and capacity building: equipping clinicians and patients to use VHT tools effectively.

Looking ahead, the Commission indicated it will continue backing this ongoing support, through guidance and evolving regulation, to help translate VHT potential into tangible benefits for patients and healthcare systems.

22/10 — EU-funded research on Virtual Human Twins (VHTs): fostering collaboration to accelerate innovation

This event gathered leading EU-funded research initiatives focused on Virtual Human Twins (VHTs), from Horizon Europe projects advancing personalized disease management to initiatives under the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI). It provided a unique opportunity to align ongoing research with the EDITH Roadmap’s strategic objectives and spur collaboration toward building the forthcoming Advanced VHT Platform.

Event plan

Several projects, including TARGET, with whom we collaborate, were invited to present their progress, goals, insights, and results to date:

  • GEMINI develops multiscale digital twins for ischemic and haemorrhagic stroke patients, aiming to create validated computational models to improve treatment and understand stroke mechanisms. It focuses on personalizing digital twins and integrating these models into clinical systems for wider application.
  • DIGIPREDICT: a twin platform modelling individual pathophysiology and predicting viral-disease progression and cardiovascular impacts, using real-time wearables and organ-on-chip systems.
  • TARGET: developing health virtual twins to advance AF-related stroke prevention and rehabilitation. Predictive AI models aim to identify stroke risk, guide post-stroke recovery, and improve physical and cognitive outcomes. Starting with the heart and extending to other organs, TARGET uses patient data across disease stages for personalised prevention and care. The project also builds a digital community linking patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals, and is exploring collaboration with MAESTRIA project to accelerate innovation in stroke management.
  • dAIbetes : aspires to revolutionize Type 2 Diabetes treatment through personalized predictive models, reducing prediction errors by at least 10%. It uses data from 800,000 patients and advanced AI techniques to create virtual twin models for better treatment outcomes.
  • ARTEMIS: focuses on advancing understanding of Metabolic Associated Fatty Liver Disease (MAFLD) and its cardiac complications. It integrates multi-organ models, including the heart and circulation systems, and aims to bring Virtual Health Twins (VHTs) closer to clinical practice with AI-driven clinical validation.
  • TETRIS: Personalised risk scores (clinical, genetic, imaging) to anticipate long-term cardiac, pulmonary, and secondary-tumour risks after radiotherapy, plus digital-twin trajectory simulations for precise decisions.
  • STRATUM: is working on a 3D decision support tool to assist surgeons during brain tumour surgeries. It provides real-time, data-driven insights to improve surgical decisions and patient outcomes, with future plans for clinical validation.
  • DTRIP4H: A decentralised twin ecosystem linking European research infrastructures, blending real and synthetic data for cancer, drug discovery, and precision medicine, with strong ethics and AI governance.
  • CERTAINTY: Virtual patient twins to personalise adoptive cellular immunotherapies in cancer by combining in silico, real-world, and in vitro evidence.

 

These projects are part of a bigger effort to bring Digital Twin and AI tools into everyday, personalised care, covering everything from diabetes and cancer to stroke and more. To make a real difference, we’ll need to link up many kinds of health data, build AI models people can trust, and keep refining the tech so it actually fits how clinicians work and helps patients.

Together, the events painted a clear  picture of a VHT field that’s moving fast, and what that could mean for better healthcare in the near future.