A virtual model based on digital twin technology was the highlight of a biomedical engineering forum held jointly by the US and Taiwan in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday.
With the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based digital twin technology, doctors would be able to test the effectiveness of medications on a person’s digital twin before administering them, said Renee Yao (姚睿君), global healthcare AI start-ups lead at Nvidia Corp.
AI technology can also be adopted to determine which of the numerous cells in the human body are not functioning well, and thus can help physicians prescribe the right medicines, Yao said at the US-Taiwan Biomedical Engineering Forum (UTBEF).
Photo: CNA
The new technology also allows for faster development of new drugs, Yao said.
“In earlier years, it took at least 10 years to develop a new drug, and it cost about US$10 billion to bring it to market, but now the process takes only two months and costs about US$2 million,” she said.
The digitalization of genomic and organ data, as well as surgery, gives researchers and healthcare professionals access to a digital world in which they can simulate, validate and predict outcomes with greater accuracy, Yao said.
A digital twin is a virtual model that is designed using real-world data to accurately reflect a physical object, combining several core technologies such as AI, the Internet of Things, the cloud and extended reality, according to experts.
Nvidia has been at the forefront of efforts to adopt such technologies for use in the healthcare sector, providing support to more than 1,800 healthcare start-ups in the fields of digital health, medical instruments, medical imaging, genomics and drug discovery.
The US firm’s representative was among 17 other experts from the US and Taiwan who attended this year’s UTBEF physically or virtually to discuss ways to solve problems in the biomedical sector.
The Taiwanese attendees included former National Taiwan University Hospital superintendent Ho Hong-nerng (何弘能), Harvard Medical School assistant professor Yu Kun-hsing (余坤興) and Chen Huei-sheng (陳惠生), a doctor and faculty member at Indiana University School of Medicine.
UTBEF was launched in 2008 by Joseph Yang (楊啟航), former director of the Science and Technology Division at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco. Since 2014, the Taiwanese American Industrial Technology Association Silicon Valley has hosted it.
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