The heart of M4-HEALTH is physiologically based digital twins of individuals, in other words realistic computer models that describe what happens in the human body. The basis for these twins has been laid for example in a series of projects funded by Swedish Research Council and led by the coordinator Gunnar Cedersund. For example:听M4-health: the basis for general AI in health care
In this new network, we are taking these twins to a new and distributed level, where scientists from all over Sweden, and all over the world, can contribute to the developments of the models, and where the twins are used in a new eco-system for health.
This ecosystem includes not only healthcare, but schools, defense industry, clothing and food industries, yoga studios and gyms, etc. M4-HEALTH is one of the most comprehensive, ambitious, and integrated networks focusing on health and healthcare ever assembled in Sweden. It attempts to create a new infrastructure for storage of all available knowledge and data about the human body and about each individual into the twin, and to use the twin to drive society in a more health-promoting, personalised and sound direction.
Why do we need a new model for health?
Our current, highly fragmented, healthcare systems are facing three simultaneous challenges:
- The number of 80-year-olds in society is increasing with 50 percent in a 10-year period, which implies enormous increases in costs and need of personnel.
- The health in our younger working force has decreased for several decades, and this keeps getting worse.
- AI and data revolutions imply that knowledge and expertise is increasingly available for everybody, and not just to experts.
To be able to meet all these new changes, we need a new model for health 鈥� M4-HEALTH.
Revolutionary technology: hybrid digital twins of individuals
Over the last 25 years, we have incrementally and systematically assembled a new and unique technology: a physiologically based digital twin or computer model of the human body. What makes this twin technology special in the world is that it can simulate what happens when you do different things, like eat a meal, exercise or take a medication, along four crucial axes, described by four M:
- Multi-level: From the whole-body to all organs and even inside cells.
- Multi-timescale: From short responses over seconds to long-term disease progression over years.
- Multi-species: Both in humans and in other animals for which we have key data.听
- Mechanistic: Using both data-driven and explainable physiologically based approaches.
These four axes makes up the basis for our unique M4-models, and we believe that the combination of these M4-models with machine learning (ML) and large language models (LLMs) will be the next big breakthrough in AI for health.
The solution: a new ecosystem for health
These hybrid digital twins look like an individual, can be used for a variety of different purposes, and can therefore be used as a binding kit for a new integrated ecosystem for health. This ecosystem can integrate all data and knowledge: your own data goes into your own personal data vault, all general data is coordinated into harmonized databases that can be used for federated learning, and all these data and knowledge is integrated into the digital twin, which describes an updated understanding of you as an individual.
This ecosystem can also be used along your entire health journey: ranging from schools and sports organisations, to the defense industry, gaming, food and clothing industry, to yoga studios, gyms and other preventive actors, all the way to traditional healthcare, eldercare and even forensics.
We integrate 16 universities in Sweden, and connect with many leading international networks and organisations. We have the explicit support and involvement of鈥痮ver 100 companies, governmental bodies, and other non-profit organizations.
Our ambition is that this new ecosystem will be able to create P4-medicine: predictive and therefore preventive actions that preventive diseases before, in a way that is personalized to each individual, and participatory, since that individual is active in his/her own health.
