Swiss AI medical firm Sophia Genetics is using digital twins to create dynamic, virtual representations of individual patients to simulate potential outcomes and help oncologists make better treatment decisions.

The DDM digital twins use each patient’s clinical, biological, imaging and genomic data to generate a computational replica of the patient and their individual disease. Oncologists can use the virtual replica of the patient, or digital twin, to simulate treatment responses, disease trajectories and survival outcomes in real time, and to explore potential treatment strategies virtually before making decisions at the bedside.

“Digital twin technology enables integrative visualisation of multimodal oncologic data, revealing latent correlations across modalities,” said Pierre Heudel, medical oncologist at Centre Léon Bérard (www.centreleonberard.fr). “By simulating disease trajectories and therapeutic responses within a virtual environment, digital twins offer a framework for in silicoexperimentation, supporting anticipatory and individualised clinical decision-making.”

Clara Montagut, head of gastrointestinal cancer at Hospital del Mar (www.hospitaldelmar.cat), added: “This breakthrough technology represents an important step forward in helping clinicians make more informed decisions for complex cancers. Having a digital model that can simulate potential outcomes before treatment has the potential to be transformative in how we deliver future care.”

Digital twins leverage the collective intelligence of the Sophia Genetics community and a robust, multimodal, longitudinal dataset to simulate potential therapy response. The tool equips clinicians with insights derived from a broad network of global patient cases by breaking down institutional and geographic barriers and enabling clinicians to tap into a global intelligence to enhance decision making.

“Building on advances from preclinical and clinical research, digital-twin technology offers new avenues to enhance the diagnosis and management of complex diseases, including cancer,” said Ernest Nadal, director at Catalan Institute of Oncology (ico.gencat.cat/ca/inici). “Sophia DDM digital twins provide clinicians and researchers with a robust, data-driven framework for hypothesis testing and may represent a meaningful step towards broader implementation of precision medicine.”

Mariano Provencio Pulla, head of the oncology department at Puerta de Hierro University Hospital (www.comunidad.madrid/hospital/puertadehierro), added: “The digital-twins concept developed by Sophia Genetics is really a breakthrough in oncology. We absolutely need this approach to take full advantage of major progress that has been made in clinical care in recent years, especially in the context of pre-surgical immunotherapy for patients with non-small cell lung cancer eligible for surgery. I truly believe that it is the future of data-driven medicine.”

Powered by AI, DDM digital twins continuously evolve as new data become available, strengthening accuracy and research capabilities over time. The tool also generates synthetic data that reflect real-world disease patterns, enabling researchers to explore additional therapeutic paths and model potential outcomes before committing to a treatment strategy.

“Cancer is constantly evolving, and static snapshots are no longer enough,” said Jurgi Camblong, CEO of Sophia Genetics. “With DDM digital twins, we can create advanced AI models based on our broad patient network, accelerating research, sharpening clinical decisions and turning today’s insights into tomorrow’s breakthroughs. This reflects our ambition to make data-driven medicine the global standard of care.”

DDM digital twins bring key features that could, in the future, reshape precision oncology:

• Personalised treatment insights: Help oncologists match patients to the most effective treatment strategies based on simulated outcomes, including ability to explore relevant clinical trials.
• Toxicity and cost avoidance: Provide insights to help physicians reduce patient exposure to ineffective therapies that drive unnecessary side effects and expenses.
• Global knowledge, local impact: Leverage one of the world’s most robust, de-identified multimodal cancer datasets to help oncologists make better decisions.

Sophia Genetics (www.sophiagenetics.com) is a cloud-native healthcare technology company on a mission to expand access to data-driven medicine by using AI to deliver care to patients with cancer and rare disorders across the globe.