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Health Simulations: Ethical and Societal Challenges of Digital Twins

Project description

A redefinition of healthcare in the digital age

Due to emerging technologies, healthcare is undergoing a profound redefinition of its core concepts. For example, the emergence of digital twins technology is laying the foundations for groundbreaking simulations of the human body. However, complex ethical and societal questions remain largely unexplored. Funded by the European Research Council, the SIMTWIN project aims to foster a deeper understanding of the issues involved and create practical strategies for the new era of health simulations. To that end, it will provide a comprehensive analysis of the normative challenges, paving the way for an integrated theory of health simulations. Overall, SIMTWIN's findings will shed light on the ethical and societal issues surrounding health simulations.

Objective

Digitisation has an impact on even the most fundamental concepts in medicine and public health, including our ideas of health and illness, embodiment, vulnerability and controllability. Among the emerging technologies driving this paradigm shift is that of Digital Twins (DT), which presents exceptional challenges to healthcare governance, raising ethical and societal issues of which our understanding is still rudimentary. DT may be empowering but could also exacerbate the vulnerability of both individual patients and the population at large. There are substantial gaps in our understanding of whether these new forms of artificial intelligence-driven health simulations provide new ways of engaging with experiences of human vulnerability, or whether they in fact introduce new forms of harm.

In this context, SIMTWIN will be the first project systematically identifying and examining the ethical and societal implications of the use of DT in healthcare. In doing so, SIMTWIN will promote our understanding of and practical approaches to new forms of simulation and prediction of health trajectories.

SIMTWINs central objective is to provide a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the normative challenges implied in order to develop an integrated theory of health simulations. In proposing an empirically-based and normatively robust framework for an ethical and societal assessment of this technology, SIMTWIN will enable the design of practical modes of controllability for the use of DT in health.

At a moment in history in which our societies find themselves facing crucial decisions on how to approach the complex issues raised by the dual, simultaneously transformative and disruptive character of health simulations, SIMTWIN promises ground-breaking insights into the associated normative and societal challenges and key orientations for a robust and innovative governance framework.

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2022-STG

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Host institution

RHEINISCHE FRIEDRICH-WILHELMS-UNIVERSITAT BONN
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 497 275,00
Address
REGINA PACIS WEG 3
53113 BONN
Germany

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Region
Nordrhein-Westfalen Köln Bonn, Kreisfreie Stadt
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 497 275,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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