Thierry Marchal, global industry director for healthcare, construction and consumer products at ANSYS explains the effect digital twins is having on healthcare and on medtech. 

Healthcare is rapidly embracing digital twin technology. The goal of this trend is to deliver data-driven personalised medicine.

Digital twins are built on computer-based, or in silico, models that are fed individual and population data.

Researchers are aided by these digital representations of human physiology in their studies of disease, new drugs and devices. Healthcare industry leaders and FDA authorities suggest that digital twins help to accelerate medical innovation and regulatory approval.

In the future, these tools may even help doctors accurately optimise the performance of patient-specific treatment plans.

In short, digital twins can help healthcare providers bring life-saving innovations to market faster, at reduced costs and with increased patient safety.

Digital Twins Deployed to Optimise the Aerosol Deposition of Medications

Patients receiving aerosol-delivered chemotherapeutic drugs have a lot to lose when tumour-targeting treatments miss their marks or “hit” healthy tissue. Fortunately, engineering simulation and more specifically computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can help researchers study conventional drug delivery.

In fact, researchers at Oklahoma State University’s Computational Biofluidics and Biomechanics Laboratory (CBBL) found that only 20% of an inhaled drug reached its target within the lungs. The remainder made its way to non-cancerous tissue, often with adverse effects.

CBBL researchers looked to see if restricting the active drug’s particle size and region within the aerosol (versus distributing them evenly throughout the spray) would improve delivery efficiency.

They successfully simulated the aerosol particles’ movement through a digital twin of an adult’s upper airway. The team then varied parameters like the diameters of the particles, inhalation flow rates and the initial locations of the medication within the aerosol. The researchers eventually optimised the medical aerosol to have a delivery efficiency over 90%.

The airway configuration belongs to CBBL’s virtual human system — a collection of digital twins that model the respiratory systems of adults and children as they sit and stand. By importing lung geometries from CT/MRI scans, researchers can now create patient-specific twins.

Digital Twins Provide Invaluable Assistance to Brain Surgeons

Digital twins are also smart enough to help medical researchers treat our brains. For instance, France-based startup Sim&Cure has developed a patient-based digital twin for treating aneurysms.

If not treated, a cerebral aneurysm is a possible life-threatening pathology. Sim&Cure uses simulations and digital twins to help neurosurgeons maximise patient safety as they undergo treatment.

Aneurysms are blood vessel bulges that are caused by a weakening in an arterial wall. They can be found in 2% of the population. A small, but terrifying, fraction of these aneurysms can then result in clots, stroke and death.

Brain surgery is typically the last resort to repair aneurysms. Endovascular repair, however, is a less-invasive option that is associated with a lower risk. It uses a catheter-guided implant to shore up damaged arteries and relieve the pressure on the aneurysm caused by irregular blood flow.

Unfortunately, findings by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) show that up to 65% of all endovascular procedures are geographically challenged (i.e., they miss their marks). For example, if an intrasaccular device doesn’t expand to the volume of the aneurysm, blood can fill the gaps and exert additional pressure.

Sim&Cure’s developed a clinical software available in the operating room to help surgeons select an optimal implant to form-fit both the cross section and length of the aneurysm. They even won regulatory approval for a digital twin that helps surgeons select and deploy endovascular implants that optimise aneurysm repair.

After the patient is prepped for surgery, the software creates a 3D model of the aneurysm and the surrounding blood vessels creating a digital twin (a detailed computer model) of the patient specific cerebral aneurysm. Sim&Cure’s sizing software uses this personalised model to offer the surgeon a selection of devices appropriate and available for implant.

Once the surgeon identifies the device, the software uses ANSYS Mechanical, an embedded mechanical engineering simulation tool, to model the deployment of the implant in the aneurysm.

The surgeon can then run 10-to-20-second simulations, rotating and zooming in on the deployed device. This helps the surgeon gain a keen understanding of the interactive relationship between the implant and the aneurysm. In less than five minutes, numerous implants can be assessed to optimise the procedure.

Preliminary trials have been impressive to say the least. While 10% of endovascular treatments necessitate follow-up procedures, at the time of this writing, not a single procedure using Sim&Cure’s software has required additional intervention.

Digital twin technology allows healthcare solution providers and research labs to offer more precise drug targeting, test different surgeries before selecting the safest one for the patient. This “in silico” approach nicely and effectively complements the traditional in vivo and in vitro processes potentially meaning faster regulatory approval.

All of these benefits translate in better treatment for everyone on the planet, higher recovery rates, better recovery times, and more effective treatment for difficult conditions. In short – a better standard of life for humankind and more cost effective health care for our countries.