# Patient digital twins

Source: https://onco.cc/technologies/digital-twin-patient-models/  
OnCo record `digital-twin-patient-models` (Technology). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

A digital twin is a computer model of one patient's tumour and body, updated with each scan and blood test, used to forecast how the disease will respond to each option before it is tried.

## Summary

Patient digital twins combine mechanistic models (growth, radiobiology, pharmacokinetics, immune dynamics) with a patient's own imaging, genomics and markers, re-fitted as new data arrive. Prototypes forecast glioma growth for radiotherapy planning, optimise radiation fractionation for individual patients, simulate CAR-T expansion and choose adaptive therapy thresholds; the US National Academies set out a research agenda for digital twins in 2023 and the FDA has begun to discuss their evidentiary standards. They differ from virtual control arms, which model a typical patient rather than this one, and they stand or fall on the identifiability of their parameters from sparse clinical data.

## Fields

- Kind: Technology
- Status: emerging
- Last checked: 2026-09-17
- Tags: mathematical-model
- Principle: A patient-specific state model is calibrated and continually updated from that patient's data, then run forward under alternative treatments to compare predicted outcomes.
- Since: 2020
- Strengths: Individual forecasts rather than averages; Integrates every model on this page; Natural framework for adaptive treatment
- Limitations: Parameters often not identifiable from clinical data; No regulatory pathway yet; Validation requires prospective trials

## Sources

- National Academies 2023: Foundational research gaps and future directions for digital twins: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26894

## Connected records

- fronts: [AI & Computation](https://onco.cc/fronts/ai-computation/), [Drug Discovery Platforms](https://onco.cc/fronts/drug-discovery/)
- technologies: [Adaptive therapy (evolution-based dosing)](https://onco.cc/technologies/adaptive-therapy-dynamics/), [Digital twins and virtual control arms](https://onco.cc/technologies/digital-twins-trials/), [Proliferation-invasion (reaction-diffusion) models of glioma](https://onco.cc/technologies/reaction-diffusion-glioma-model/), [Quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP)](https://onco.cc/technologies/quantitative-systems-pharmacology/)

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