European Virtual Human Twins Initiative

What is a virtual human twin?

A virtual human twin (VHT) is 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 behaviour of their physical counterparts, including interaction with additional diseases a person may have.

The key potential in health and care of this technology is related to targeted prevention, tailored clinical pathways, and to supporting healthcare professionals in virtual environments. Examples include implementation of clinical trials for medicines and devices, medical training, surgical intervention planning, and several other potential use cases in virtual world environments.

What is the Virtual Human Twins Initiative trying to achieve?

Virtual human twins hold great potential in advancing personalised care, a core priority for the European Union. It will accelerate tangible benefits for citizens and patients, while also sustaining and advancing EU science and technology.

Virtual human twins already exist across many Member States. Academia, large industry and SME innovators have already developed different versions of them. However, even if the number of interested stakeholders in VHTs is growing, the ecosystem remains highly fragmented in the EU. 

Through the European Virtual Human Twins Initiative, the European Commission intends to power up advanced supercomputing capacities and artificial intelligence to facilitate collaborative VHT research and technology development. This makes it possible to develop, run and better simulate the models in ways previously not possible, speeding up the development of VHTs through enabling large AI foundational model training specific to human health and diseases.

How are we going to do this?

• Foster inclusion and collaboration among diverse stakeholders in the virtual human twins ecosystem; 
• Facilitate advanced research and technology development on virtual human twins, including by integrating the benefits offered by the future European Health Data Space; 
• Leverage the power of supercomputers; 
• Breakdown silos and support interoperability, integration and the scaling up of virtual human twin-based solutions; 
• Build a state-of-the-art platform to enable modelling across scales of human anatomy and support the emergence of the next generation of virtual human twins models, in full compliance with EU values and rules: private, safe and secure

The European Virtual Human Twins Initiative aims to have a comprehensive approach and includes the following actions:  

1. The Virtual Human Twins Manifesto – Statement of Intent on VHTs Development, Evidence, and Adoption in Healthcare Systems;
2. Research and deployment actions:

• The European Virtual Human Twin (EDITH) project (Coordination and Support Action funded under the DIGITAL programme) and its Roadmap to identify the necessary building blocks to evolve towards integrated VHTs;
• 80 million EUR of research and innovation actions under Horizon Europe on “Integrated, multi-scale computational models of patient patho-physiology for personalised disease management”;
• A 24 million EUR state-of-the-art digital platform for advanced virtual human twin models’ integration and validation funded under the Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL); 
• The deployment of a 5 million EUR pan-European federated infrastructure for Intensive Care Units’ (ICU) data and data intensive computational model-based tools for decision support  and risk prevention, funded under the Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) 
• Additional 20 million EUR funding under the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) for actions on comprehensive stroke management with predictive computational models, integrated patient health data, improved visualisation.

The funding mentioned above concerns the 2023-2024 Work Programmes of Horizon Europe and Europe Digital Programme (DIGITAL). The ambition is to complement these actions with additional support from Member States.

Launch of the Virtual Human Twin Initiative

On 21 December 2023, alongside the inauguration of the MareNostrum5 supercomputer (MN5) by the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, the European Commission launched the European Virtual Human Twins (VHTs) Initiative. As part of the Initiative, the signature of The Virtual Human Twins Manifesto: Statement of Intent on Development, Evidence, and Adoption in Healthcare Systems by more than 75 leading stakeholder organisations from across the wide VHT ecosystem was also announced.  

Updates

As part of the European Virtual Human Twins Initiative, the European Commission has published the call for tenders for the procurement of a state-of-the-art digital platform for advanced virtual human twin models’ integration and validation, funded under the Digital Europe Work Programme 2023-2024 (action 2.3.4, page 85).  

More information about the procurement and application procedure can be found on the Funding & Tenders Portal: EU Funding & Tenders Portal (europa.eu).