Not in vein! Studying the heart and detecting diseases using maths and engineering

What would you do with a virtual version of yourself? How would this be used to improve your health care and improve the healthcare of others? This talk will explore the captivating world of digital twins of the heart. Discover where we are up to, what are the challenges and what are the opportunities of this new technology.

Cells in our body use freely circulating fluids to communicate with each other. Tumours also use these fluids as a source of nutrients to grow and as a vehicle to travel and spread from one part of the body to another. Among the chemicals released from cells into these fluids, small fragments of DNA or RNA can be used as indicators to detect the presence of a disease, such as cancer. But can they also predict the future? for example, can we predict, after only twelve weeks of pregnancy, how likely a woman is to give birth prematurely, up to six months later? Screening tests based on the rapid and low-cost analysis of bodily fluids such as blood or skin fluid could transform the way patients are being diagnosed, monitored, and treated.