EDITH - European Virtual Human Twin

Status: Finished Policy support Health

EDITH, a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) project funded by the European Commission, aims to create a roadmap for developing a fully integrated digital twin of the entire human body in the EU. This ambitious goal involves combining multiple scales and organs into one cohesive model.

To achieve this, EDITH is building an evolving ecosystem, guided by the collective input of European experts. The project will provide practical tools, including a data/model repository and a future simulation platform, to support this integration.

The EDITH project has four main objectives:

Fostering an Inclusive Ecosystem: EDITH aims to create a comprehensive ecosystem of digital twins in healthcare across EU Member States and associated countries. This involves mapping existing relevant actors, initiatives, resources, and barriers to the digital twins. The goal is to ensure adequate clinical representation, while fostering collaboration and integration of all relevant stakeholders, including solution developers, technology providers, infrastructure providers, end-users (healthcare professionals and patients), regulatory agencies, and Health Technology Assessment (HTA) bodies.
Building a Roadmap for the Virtual Human Twin (VHT): EDITH is developing roadmap with all the necessary conditions to evolve towards an integrated VHT. This roadmap identifies the necessary building blocks for clinical application, provide short- and mid-term policy recommendations, and addresses interoperability, computability, and health information integration from various sources. It also identifies any possible needs and barriers, including the development of a strategic approach for the clinical deployment of the VHT model.
Developing a Federated Repository: EDITH has the objective to create a federated and cloud-based repository of digital twins (data, models, algorithms, and good practices) in healthcare. This repository offers a virtual collaboration environment for multiple users and organizations, pooling existing digital twin resources from across Europe. The ecosystem is leveraged to create a catalogue of available resources and recruit contributions from both the consortium and external contributors.
Establishing a Simulation Platform: EDITH’s simulation platform with personal user accounts and roles with specific permissions, outlines how to provide users with a one-stop shop for designing, developing, testing, and validating single organ digital twins, and combine them to into integrated VHT models. Five use-cases are developed as prototypes, showcasing the platform’s functionalities.

VITO's role in EDITH

VITO has made significant contributions to various aspects of the EDITH project, ensuring its alignment with European regulatory frameworks and its long-term impact on digital twin technologies in healthcare. One of our key contributions was supporting the continuous improvement of the EDITH roadmap, bringing our broad expertise to various tasks within the project.

We contributed to the development of the federated repository, focusing on secure data an model sharing in compliance with the EU AI Act and GDPR. By addressing legal and regulatory challenges, we helped create a trusted and interoperable environment for healthcare digital twins across Europe.

We helped shape the vision of the simulation platform by defining user roles and access control mechanisms. Our contributions ensured that the platform provides a structured and secure environment for researchers, clinicians, and technology providers to use, develop, test, and validate digital twin models.

We also played a major role in developing a prototype for secure cross-border health data sharing. Using SOLID data pods (We Are), we demonstrated an end-to-end solution that allow individuals to store and share their medical data with explicit consent, ensuring compliance with GDPR and data sovereignty principles. Beyond technical implementation, we contributed to the project’s sustainability strategy by defining a business model that ensures the long-term adoption within the European healthcare ecosystem.