Digital twins in health
VITO supports healthcare providers, SMEs, and regulators through research and applied solutions in Digital Health Twins. Digital Twins in Health are highly personalised, dynamic, and computational representations of individuals or populations that integrate biological, clinical, and environmental data to support prediction, prevention, personalisation, and participation in healthcare.
The challenge
Health is not defined by biology alone. Clinical outcomes are shaped by a complex interplay of genetics, lifestyle, environment, and healthcare interventions. Yet, most scientific tools and medical models treat these factors in isolation, limiting their ability to capture the true complexity of human health.
Digital twins—virtual representations of patients built from biological, clinical, and contextual data—offer a way forward. They make it possible to simulate scenarios, ask “what if?”, and explore treatment or prevention strategies before applying them in real life. But despite their promise, translating digital twins into routine clinical practice remains challenging:
- Fragmented models: most digital twins are developed for one aspect at a time (e.g. a single organ, a disease, or a treatment), and rarely integrate across biological and environmental layers.
- Data diversity and quality: integrating omics, imaging, clinical records, and real-world data into coherent, reliable models is technically and organisationally complex.
- Validation & trust: clinicians and patients expect models that are transparent, robust, and validated in real-world settings.
- Scalability: creating twins that are both personalised and broadly applicable across populations requires careful balance.
- Evolving standards: ethical, regulatory, and technical frameworks for health digital twins are still emerging, creating uncertainty for innovators and adopters.
Unless these barriers are addressed, healthcare digital twins risk remaining research prototypes rather than becoming trusted tools that genuinely improve patient care and decision-making.
VITO's solutions to these challenges
VITO supports healthcare providers, SMEs, and regulators through research and applied solutions in Digital Health Twins. We develop tools and services that accelerate the adoption of digital twin technologies, enhance clinical decision-making, and foster a more sustainable, trustworthy healthcare system.
Pharmacogenomics applications to personalise prescriptions
VITO develops AI-supported pharmacogenomics tools that help clinicians tailor drug prescriptions to an individual’s genetic profile. By integrating genomic variants with patient-specific data, these applications reduce adverse drug reactions, improve treatment efficacy, and enable safer medication use.
Biological Age & Multi-omics Health Profiling
Chronological age is important but remains an unreliable predictor of health alone. VITO creates biological age models by integrating multi-omics data (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, epigenomics) with lifestyle and clinical parameters. These models offer early warning signals for accelerated aging and disease risk, enabling preventive interventions before disease onset (see Nature npj Digital Medicine 2025).
Polygenic Risk Scores (PRS) for clinical use
VITO translates state-of-the-art PRS research into clinical-ready solutions. By stratifying patients based on genetic predispositions to common diseases (e.g., diabetes, cardiovascular disease), PRS allows healthcare providers to implement targeted screening, prevention, and lifestyle interventions.
AI driven Digital Twin Infrastructure & Simulation Environments
We design simulation environments for patient-specific and cohort-level twins. These environments integrate EHR data, imaging, and biosignals with AI-driven models to test interventions virtually, optimise trial design, and support preventive care strategies.
Research into Trustworthy and Inclusive Digital Twins
VITO leads research on fairness, transparency, and inclusivity in digital twin models. We develop explainable and privacy-preserving algorithms, synthetic datasets for rare populations, and tools to ensure equitable performance across demographics, making digital twins accessible to all.
VITO as your partner for Digital Twins
VITO is an independent applied research organisation in Flanders, Belgium. At VITO, our aim is a society where sustainability is the norm. We create innovative technological solutions and actively share our knowledge with academics, businesses, and government bodies.
VITO's Digital BioSystems (DBS) experts pioneer digital twins for human health in synergy with regulatory science. With 10+ years of expertise in deep learning for medical diagnosis and prognosis, and 5+ years of regulatory science innovation, our experts bridge cutting-edge digital twins building, AI infusion, regulatory science towards clinical translation.
Our success stories include the creation of MONA, a spin-off delivering CE-certified AI solutions for retinal disease detection and monitoring.
VITO's labs in the Earth building
Our projects
VITO co-leads national research programmes linking digital twin concepts with real-world clinical needs, from diabetes prevention to stratified oncology pathways. Here are some examples of these collaborative initiatives.
EDITH - European Virtual Human Twin (CSA)
Building the shared European ecosystem for health digital twins: roadmap from single-organ models to multiscale, multiorgan “whole-body” twins, plus a federated repository of models, data, and good practices to accelerate clinical uptake.
ONCOSCREEN - Next-gen CRC screening and early detection
EU-wide clinical validation to modernise colorectal cancer screening with accurate, non-invasive technologies and higher participation, laying the groundwork for risk-stratified, twin-driven screening pathways across 15 countries and 4,100 participants.
DigiTwins4PH - Digital Twins for Personalised Healthcare (KU Leuven)
National program (2023–2026) positioning Belgium to embed personalised health twins into policy and practice, strengthening infrastructures that connect clinical, research, and population datasets for sustainable implementation.
Beyond the Genome - Ethical Aspects of Large Cohort Studies
Joint project (UAntwerp, UHasselt, VITO) advancing ethics, governance, and responsible data use for large cohorts, the very foundations that make trustworthy, clinically acceptable health twins possible.
DVPS - Diversis Viis, Plurima Solvens (Horizon Europe)
A major European effort to create an open-source toolkit for multimodal foundation models (language, vision, sensor). These technologies enable richer patient digital twins by fusing clinical text, imaging, and signals with scalable, transparent model pipelines.
In DVPS, VITO creates open source tools to evaluate and enhance performance and trustworthiness of multimodal generative AI models such as ChatGPT.
Flemish expertise indispensable in development of new class of AI systems
Would you like to know more?
Feel free to contact our experts on Digital Health Twins via digitaltwins@vito.be.
Digital Twins in Health are highly personalised, dynamic, and computational representations of individuals or populations that integrate biological, clinical, and environmental data to support prediction, prevention, personalisation, and participation in healthcare.
Digital health twins make it possible to simulate scenarios, ask “what if?”, and explore treatment or prevention strategies before applying them in real life.
VITO supports healthcare providers, SMEs, and regulators through research and applied solutions in Digital Health Twins. We develop tools and services that accelerate the adoption of digital twin technologies, enhance clinical decision-making, and foster a more sustainable, trustworthy healthcare system.
