Those who know they are at risk for cardiovascular disease can take action and prevent or reduce suffering. That’s the idea behind MyDigiTwin, a digital twin that “mirrors” your health based on big data. UMC Utrecht, together with other UMCs, has received 3 million euros from the Heart Foundation for its development.
The Netherlands has about 1.4 million heart patients. Every day, 730 people are hospitalized because of cardiovascular diseases. Professor of Cardiology Folkert Asselbergs is involved in MyDigiTwin from the UMC Utrecht. He explains that most people who unexpectedly end up in the hospital with a cardiovascular disease did not know they had that condition. “A shame, because that way they only find out after a heart attack that their heart is faltering. If they had known earlier, they could have prevented a lot of suffering.”
And that is exactly what MyDigiTwin is supposed to help with: insight into one’s own health. The idea is that people enter their own health data, for example through an app. By linking this personal data to the data of people participating in long-term health studies, a picture of your personal health situation is created. Folkert explains: “The database that serves as the basis for MyDigiTwin already contains data from hundreds of thousands of people. If you combine that data – height, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels – with data about your lifestyle – smoking, exercising, drinking – a virtual person comes out of that database that most resembles you: your digital twin. From that, you can see how high your risk of cardiovascular disease is. Then you can see whether it helps to adjust your lifestyle. With that, you can experiment digitally and discover whether it makes sense for you to exercise more or eat less fat, for example.”
Folkert emphasizes here that everyone becomes the owner of their own data and decides for themselves who can view this data. “People manage their data themselves and can upload it in MyDigiTwin to link it with other data to gain insight into their own health.” In the coming years, more and more people are expected to collect their health data themselves in a digital environment, a so-called PBM: personal health environment. Such a PGO is a lifelong online tool for patients to keep control of their own health data: from treatment to medication and from test results to vaccinations. Folkert: “As yet, a PGO is only a safe with data and not a tool to prevent or treat illness. We are building MyDigiTwin on top of such a PGO. So people can start using their personal health data to gain more insight into their health.”
Folkert expects the first prototype of MyDigiTwin to be ready in about three years. “After that we will keep developing it further, because so much can be done. For example, by linking your supermarket card or your sports card to it, the system can create an increasingly accurate digital profile. We also want to ensure that users can use it to predict whether medication will work by including genetic information. Initially, with MyDigiTwin we are focusing on cardiovascular diseases, but eventually the tool should start offering insight into your entire personal health.” The MyDigiTwin study is a collaboration between UMC Groningen, Radboud University Erasmus MC and UMC Utrecht.
A very first component of MyDigiTwin is the chatbot for cardiovascular disease that is being developed together with the Heart to Handle foundation. This is an educational tool to teach people more about cardiovascular diseases. Often people experience visiting a doctor as a big step. Currently, even half of the patients who end up in the hospital with CPR have no medical history, even though the warning signs were there. For example, they had been struggling with exertion for some time or were short of breath when walking up stairs. Chest pain is one of the most well-known symptoms, but there are many more symptoms that give away far in advance whether someone is at risk for cardiovascular disease. A chatbot can ask users the right questions so that people become more aware of this.
In recent weeks, eight Delft students have cycled 3000 kilometers to raise money for this chatbot. More information: www.hearttohandle.nl
