Meet your digital twin

Imagine we could have a digital version of our entire body which could help us, and our doctors, decide what life style is good for us, predict which diseases we might get, and how to best treat them? In short, what if we could all have our very own digital twin?

The idea isn't quite as sci-fi as it sounds. A gigantic scientific effort called the Physiome Project is about piecing together a mathematical description of the entire physiology of the human body. Once this has been achieved to a sufficient level digital twins will be a spin-off.

In this podcast we revisit an interview we did back in 2019 with Steven Niederer, who was then Professor of Biomedical Engineering at King's College London but has since moved to a new position at Imperial College London as Chair of Biomedical Engineering. Niederer told us about the physiome project, about how the fitbits many of us own are a very first step towards a digital twin, and about how you can model individual human organs such as the heart. We also challenge ourselves to explain differential equations in one minute.

You can find out more about maths and medicine, differential equations and mathematical modelling on Plus.

We met Niederer in 2019 when he helped to organise a research programme at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge.

The music in this podcast comes from the artist Oli Freke. The track is called Space Power Facility.

This podcast forms part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI) – you can find all the content from the collaboration here.

The INI is an international research centre and our neighbour here on the University of Cambridge's maths campus. It attracts leading mathematical scientists from all over the world, and is open to all. Visit www.newton.ac.uk to find out more.