Living Heart Project – Crowdsourcing the Virtual Twin of the Human Heart

Virtual Human Twins have begun to transform the development of new therapies as well as enrich the patient experience, closing the loop between manufacturer and clinical use. The Living Heart Project has brought together a global multidisciplinary community of experts to demonstrate that it is now possible to reconstruct a human heart from the makeup of the tissue, to the ions flowing through the muscle fibers all the way through to the details of the resulting blood flow through the body. Researchers can now reconstruct patient experiences to better understand disease, design and test new treatments. The methodologies are being used at leading hospitals such as Boston Children’s Hospital to perform complex surgeries on the virtual patients to optimize them prior to the real surgery. The Living Heart model is even under evaluation by the FDA to determine if it is possible to use as a surrogate for real patients in a regulatory review.