The current “one size fits all” approach to healthcare fails to recognise the significant differences between the bodies and behaviours of different patients. This creates inefficiencies and cost overruns — but it also affects the quality of care provided. By personalising the specific treatment to each patient, healthcare will become more affordable for patients and more profitable for providers due to increased efficiency. Implanted medical devices and wearables are becoming more commonplace, saving millions of lives each year. Yet personalised healthcare still requires a significant paradigm shift, as well as a new technology toolkit for collecting data via devices and wearables that is used to customise treatment. Engineering simulation provides a cost-effective, rapid and straightforward solution for modelling patients’ bodies and designing devices that interact optimally with the body. This allows healthcare providers to devise truly personalised treatment plans, as well as predict health problems before they occur, enabling early intervention. While this “medical digital twin” concept might seem like science fiction, advanced technology is poised to improve the quality of life for people around the world.
View: Leveraging Engineering Simulation to Fast-Track Personalised Healthcare (PDF)