Could the key to your future health rest with a digital twin who acts as a crystal ball of future health that doctors can use for dry run procedures or to monitor reactions to treatment?
A scientist who champions the idea predicts the development will become commonplace but only if patients are confident that their data is as secure as a bank account.
Peter Coveney, a chemistry professor and computational scientist, says the rise of artificial intelligence means computers can accumulate knowledge like no doctor before them – and predict a patient’s health like a weather forecast.
The idea of giving you and your doctors a digital body double to examine has attracted interest from universities, major corporations such as Nokia and Siemens, and Saudi Arabia’s futuristic megacity Neom, among others.
But it gives rise to ethical questions such as: Who controls my data? Is my right to privacy being invaded? And would an AI medic lack the necessary human touch?
Prof Coveney, the director of University College London’s Centre for Computational Science and co-author of a book called Virtual You charting the path towards digital twins, believes there are “compelling benefits” that make this ethical minefield worth navigating.
The technology exists to provide that level of security
Peter Coveney,
chemistry professor
“At a stroke you should be able to reduce, if not entirely eliminate, the use of animals, because these so-called animal models are never sufficiently faithful to humans anyway,” he told The National.
The idea, he says, is that people can deal with not just the short-term weather of ailments requiring a doctor’s visit but understand the climate of their long-term health.
“You can have access in these scenarios to your own data. Indeed you should have your own data, you should hold it yourself so you don’t depend on hospitals giving it to you,” he said.
“You can use that to help you to plan your own lifestyle, by making these longer-term predictions out of it, rather than just the short term where I need a fix because something’s gone wrong.”
Organ doubles
The immediate aim is not to replicate every one of the 30 trillion-odd human cells in your body. That would take too long, even with modern computing power. However, efforts are under way to give your vital organs a digital duplicate.
Siemens is looking at copying the heart, potentially allowing people to spot early signs of cardiovascular disease. It hopes to make this a reality within a decade. There is an EU-funded initiative to make a brain twin. US and UK researchers this month announced a $3.2 million project to digitally inspect your bladder.
These organ doppelgangers could then be programmed with your medical data – or even linked to your fitness watch – so that doctors are “treating a patient that’s in front of you, rather than a statistical inference of lots of others”, Prof Coveney said.
In Saudi Arabia the vision is of a "Dr Neom" system in which people can track their own health or consult a virtual doctor. It is hoped that every resident will benefit from the virtual database that tracks their blood type and unique genetic sequence.
Prof Coveney believes people should control the use of their data, and be able to opt in to clinical trials, to assuage fears of a Big Brother industry putting health records to unwanted use. He sees online banking security as a model.
“Most of us implicitly, if they don’t think about it too hard, are actually pretty happy with having their bank accounts accessible and managed on the internet,” he said.
“The technology exists to provide that level of security but we’re nowhere near realising it [in medicine], because it’s got all these complicated issues around ethics and who’s in charge of your data.
“But if we move to a position where everyone had their own data, and they controlled it in the same way as you have your own bank account and control it, you are then in a position to use that data in the ways you wish to for yourself and for the benefit of medical science and so on.”
AI as a doctor
If AI can crunch through all this data to make a model, can it also be your doctor? Can it take all this knowledge, maybe furrow its brow over a clipboard, and deliver a verdict on your health?
In principle, yes – but there are reasons to be cautious here too.
Software like ChatGPT may sound like a human being but it can state things as fact that are total nonsense – designers call this “hallucination" – and has no mechanism for demonstrating its workings, which is known as the “black box” problem.
The first is clearly a hazard for life-and-death decisions. The second could make doctors reluctant to trust it.
“It’s rather difficult for a regulatory authority to agree to allow a black-box solution to be used to save people’s lives if we don’t actually understand why it’s making the predictions it does,” Prof Coveney said.
That’s where people come in. Like a weather forecast, even the most sophisticated digital twin modelling would only ever be a statement of probability. It is likely you’re sick, based on the data, but every simulation will have a slightly different result. It will be up to a person to decide what to make of this.
“The sharp end is to find ways of making those predictions reliable such that we can have confidence in them, and a clinician can,” Prof Coveney said.
“We will be making informed decisions around probabilities as to what's likely to be most successful in a therapeutic context.”
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Most wanted allegations
- Benjamin Macann, 32: involvement in cocaine smuggling gang.
- Jack Mayle, 30: sold drugs from a phone line called the Flavour Quest.
- Callum Halpin, 27: over the 2018 murder of a rival drug dealer.
- Asim Naveed, 29: accused of being the leader of a gang that imported cocaine.
- Calvin Parris, 32: accused of buying cocaine from Naveed and selling it on.
- John James Jones, 31: allegedly stabbed two people causing serious injuries.
- Callum Michael Allan, 23: alleged drug dealing and assaulting an emergency worker.
- Dean Garforth, 29: part of a crime gang that sold drugs and guns.
- Joshua Dillon Hendry, 30: accused of trafficking heroin and crack cocain.
- Mark Francis Roberts, 28: grievous bodily harm after a bungled attempt to steal a £60,000 watch.
- James ‘Jamie’ Stevenson, 56: for arson and over the seizure of a tonne of cocaine.
- Nana Oppong, 41: shot a man eight times in a suspected gangland reprisal attack.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Bert van Marwijk factfile
Born: May 19 1952
Place of birth: Deventer, Netherlands
Playing position: Midfielder
Teams managed:
1998-2000 Fortuna Sittard
2000-2004 Feyenoord
2004-2006 Borussia Dortmund
2007-2008 Feyenoord
2008-2012 Netherlands
2013-2014 Hamburg
2015-2017 Saudi Arabia
2018 Australia
Major honours (manager):
2001/02 Uefa Cup, Feyenoord
2007/08 KNVB Cup, Feyenoord
World Cup runner-up, Netherlands
Ziina users can donate to relief efforts in Beirut
Ziina users will be able to use the app to help relief efforts in Beirut, which has been left reeling after an August blast caused an estimated $15 billion in damage and left thousands homeless. Ziina has partnered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to raise money for the Lebanese capital, co-founder Faisal Toukan says. “As of October 1, the UNHCR has the first certified badge on Ziina and is automatically part of user's top friends' list during this campaign. Users can now donate any amount to the Beirut relief with two clicks. The money raised will go towards rebuilding houses for the families that were impacted by the explosion.”
Profile
Company: Justmop.com
Date started: December 2015
Founders: Kerem Kuyucu and Cagatay Ozcan
Sector: Technology and home services
Based: Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai
Size: 55 employees and 100,000 cleaning requests a month
Funding: The company’s investors include Collective Spark, Faith Capital Holding, Oak Capital, VentureFriends, and 500 Startups.
Seven tips from Emirates NBD
1. Never respond to e-mails, calls or messages asking for account, card or internet banking details
2. Never store a card PIN (personal identification number) in your mobile or in your wallet
3. Ensure online shopping websites are secure and verified before providing card details
4. Change passwords periodically as a precautionary measure
5. Never share authentication data such as passwords, card PINs and OTPs (one-time passwords) with third parties
6. Track bank notifications regarding transaction discrepancies
7. Report lost or stolen debit and credit cards immediately
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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GIANT REVIEW
Starring: Amir El-Masry, Pierce Brosnan
Director: Athale
Rating: 4/5
Other must-tries
Tomato and walnut salad
A lesson in simple, seasonal eating. Wedges of tomato, chunks of cucumber, thinly sliced red onion, coriander or parsley leaves, and perhaps some fresh dill are drizzled with a crushed walnut and garlic dressing. Do consider yourself warned: if you eat this salad in Georgia during the summer months, the tomatoes will be so ripe and flavourful that every tomato you eat from that day forth will taste lacklustre in comparison.
Badrijani nigvzit
A delicious vegetarian snack or starter. It consists of thinly sliced, fried then cooled aubergine smothered with a thick and creamy walnut sauce and folded or rolled. Take note, even though it seems like you should be able to pick these morsels up with your hands, they’re not as durable as they look. A knife and fork is the way to go.
Pkhali
This healthy little dish (a nice antidote to the khachapuri) is usually made with steamed then chopped cabbage, spinach, beetroot or green beans, combined with walnuts, garlic and herbs to make a vegetable pâté or paste. The mix is then often formed into rounds, chilled in the fridge and topped with pomegranate seeds before being served.
RESULT
Uruguay 3 Russia 0
Uruguay: Suárez (10'), Cheryshev (23' og), Cavani (90')
Russia: Smolnikov (Red card: 36')
Man of the match: Diego Godin (Uruguay)
Kill%20
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