From predicting the future to exploring “what if?” Could Virtual Human Twins change health prevention?
This was the question Luc Nicolas addressed representing COMFORTage during the EU-China Health Forum and the Chinese Partners Academic Forum in Brussels.
Healthcare is becoming richer in data — EHRs, imaging, wearables, genomics, lifestyle and environmental information. But the real challenge is no longer simply collecting more data. It is understanding how these dimensions interact over time.
This is where Digital Twins and, ultimately, Virtual Human Twins could make a difference.
- From What is likely to happen? → to What could happen if we act differently?
- From reactive care → to proactive, personalised prevention
- From isolated data → to an integrated, longitudinal view of the person
- From AI prediction → to simulation and better decision-making
But we should not oversell the technology. The hardest step is not building the twin — it is proving its value in the real world.
For Europe, the opportunity is to build a trusted ecosystem based on interoperable data, robust models, independent validation, privacy, transparency and sustainable infrastructure.
Ultimately, the goal is not to create a perfect digital copy of a human being. It is to create a sufficiently trustworthy model to help make better decisions for that person.
To explore the full presentation: VHT_bilingual_CN_EN
**Article writtenby EHTEL (the European Health Telematics Association),a key partner in the COMFORTage project.
