VITAL Press Release

Complex chronic cardiovascular disorders such as heart failure or high blood pressure affect billions of people worldwide. They impair the quality of life of those affected, and often lead to serious ill-health and premature death. These disorders are difficult to treat because of the complex interaction between the function of the heart, lungs and blood vessels, their role in supplying blood to key organs, such as the brain and kidneys, and the variable influence of hormonal and other factors (environmental, genetic, psychosocial). Treating these heart problems is difficult because what helps one person might not help another. There is an urgent need for advanced tools to assist clinicians in personalising the treatment of these disorders to each patient. Virtual human twins may provide the solution.

The EU-funded Horizon Europe project VITAL – Virtual Twins as Tools for Personalized Clinical Care, running from 2024 until the end of 2029. VITAL will develop and validate the technology to build a “virtual twin” of a person’s heart and other important organs. (complex multi-organ computational models), using information collected from clinical exams and/or wearable sensors (such as smart watches) to help doctors choose the best treatments for each person. These virtual human twins will, for the first time, allow healthcare professionals to predict the short and medium term (up to 6 months after starting treatment) response to treatment. VITAL will therefore provide medical caregivers with tools for early assessment of the impact of treatment on disease trajectory, identifying who may benefit from risky or costly therapies, anticipating potential adverse reactions to treatment, improving overall health outcomes of treatment and improving cost effectiveness. In parallel, we will study how patients, doctors, and caregivers interact with these new digital tools, and address ethical, societal and psycho-social implications of these new technologies.

Ghent University leads VITAL’s world class consortium which is further composed of 8 leading universities across Europe (TU Delft, Maastricht University, University of Pisa, Jagiellonian University, Ecole Polytecnique Fédérale de Lausanne), the UK (King’s College London and University College London) and New Zealand (Auckland Bioengineering Institute), 2 research centres (imec and Austrian Institute of Technology), 2 SMEs (ELEM Biotech and WCR) and Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, Europe’s largest hospital network.

July 2024