How the pharma industry is using digital twin technology
Digital twins are an exciting area of AI innovation in the life sciences industry, and one I can see intersecting with blockchain and the metaverse in the near future.
NASA pioneered the use of digital twin technology during its space exploration missions of the 1960s and its uses have been well characterised in the manufacturing and engineering sectors. Now it is the turn of pharma companies to explore digital twin technology, which has the potential to transform drug development, drug manufacturing and patient care.
But first, what is a digital twin?
According to IBM a digital twin is "a virtual representation of an object or system that spans its lifecycle, is updated from real-time data, and uses simulation, machine learning and reasoning to help decision-making." In simpler terms think of a digital twin as a bridge between the physical and digital world.
How can digital twins be used in healthcare?
There are several ways in which digital twins have been shown to deliver value to the healthcare industry, including:
💊 Creating a digital replica of the drug manufacturing process can help pharma companies boost productivity by testing different configurations whilst anticipating maintenance needs and issues. GSK used digital twin technology to fine-tune their manufacturing process when scaling up production of their vaccine adjuvant in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
🧪 Leveraging AI and historical patient data to generate digital twins of placebo-control patients for randomised controlled trials. Requiring fewer 'real' patient control subjects can accelerate clinical trial timelines. Unlearn, a company leading in this area, recently signed a multi-year collaboration with Merck KGaA to accelerate immunology trials.
🫀 Enhancing patient care by using digital twins of organs can help researchers understand disease progression over time or the response to new drugs, treatments, or surgical interventions. Both Philips and Siemens Healthineers have developed working models of 3D digital twin hearts. The brain, liver and lungs are also potential digital twin targets.
🧬 Delivering personalised medicine, as digital twins could make it easier and more cost-effective to customise medical treatments to individuals based on their unique genetic makeup, anatomy, behaviour, and other factors. The Empa research centre in Switzerland is working on digital twins to optimise drug dosage for people afflicted by chronic pain, taking into account factors such as age and lifestyle to help customise the digital twin.
🏥 Improving care pathways by creating digital twins of hospitals and clinics. By creating a digital twin of its radiology department the Mater Hospital in Ireland was able to reduce waiting and turnaround times, improve machine utilisation and reduce the time needed for scans, all by testing different scenarios with the digital twin.
Integrating digital twin and blockchain technology
In order to generate a digital twin a tremendous amount of sensitive, personal data is required, making data security a critical issue for the life sciences industry. This concern has led to blockchain technology being suggested as a possible solution. By integrating digital twin technology with blockchain technology, we can secure these important data on an immutable, decentralised ledger and minimise the risk of loss, alteration or misuse. In addition, by using smart contracts those individuals that contributed their personal data to the development of a digital twin could benefit financially (using cryptocurrency tokens) each time the digital twin data are used in clinical research.
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