About the 2024 meeting
The 2024 IMAG/MSM meeting takes the NASEM definition of a digital twin and focuses on Biomedical Digital Twins (BDT). BDT will have digital twin challenges that are inherently unique to biomedical, biological and behavioral systems - features and limitations that may not be encountered in other digital twin domain areas. It is recognized that the vast majority (if not all) current MSM research and development projects do not meet the criteria for a NASEM defined digital twin, and less so for BDT.
Vision
Setting up teams for Biomedical Digital Twins (Teaming4BDT) is to create a community of expertise from academia, industry, medicine and government to promote, empower, and facilitate the understanding, collaboration, creation of tools and infrastructure for biomedical digital twins (BDT).
Goals
1) Understand and use best practices in team science to create multidisciplinary teams that can meet the NASEM digital twin challenges - for BDT applications.
2) Develop a mutual understanding of the components associated with the NASEM defined digital twins, and identify unique biomedical features and limitations for each component; to create a BDT requirements template for users to explain their BDT to others.
3) Meet a network of experts to address the challenges associated with developing BDT, with existing resources; to create a BDT review template for users to measure the degree of readiness/maturity of a NASEM defined BDT.
4) Form mock teams to develop present BDT ideas for actionable feedback from this peer community; to allow attendees to operationalize both BDT templates (requirements and review); to produce realizable NASEM defined BDT ideas; to train and promote the development and review of BDT in broader communities.
2024 Pre-Meeting Exercises
The team science approaches utilized in Teaming4BDT will assist the meeting attendees to identify their research needs and align with potential collaborators (likely from different domains). Such partnerships are necessary to turn multiscale models into viable digital twins. Towards this end, we request that meeting participants perform two pre-meeting exercises to aid in making the meeting even more beneficial.
Background
IMAG/MSM meetings
Since 2006, the Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group (IMAG) has hosted 18 Consortium meetings to discuss important and focused issues concerning multiscale modeling (MSM) with the goals: to stimulate new Consortium activity and create a collaborative discussion environment for all participants of the MSM Consortium as well as non-MSM attendees from the research community.
These workshops directly support the mission of the Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group (IMAG) federal agency partners: to grow the field of multiscale modeling in biomedical, biological and behavioral systems; to promote multidisciplinary scientific collaboration among multiscale modelers; to encourage future generations of multiscale modelers; to move the field of mathematical modeling forward in the following: predictive models of biology, health and disease for the clinic and the environment; bioenergy and bioremediation; and biomimetics; to develop accurate methods and algorithms to cross the interface between multiple spatiotemporal scales; to promote model sharing and the development of reusable multiscale models; and to disseminate the models and insights arrived from the models to the broader biomedical, biological, and behavioral research communities. This all aligns with the mission to improve health by leading the development and accelerating the application of biomedical studies through the promotion of biomedical modeling.
Digital Twins @ IMAG/MSM
2019 Meeting -- During the 2019 IMAG/MSM meeting, Integrating Machine Learning with Multiscale Modeling for Biomedical, Biological, and Behavioral Systems (2019 ML-MSM), digital twins was introduced as an application area for hybrid machine learning (ML) and mechanistic multiscale modeling (MSM). Pre-meeting webinars on digital twins were presented and discussed during the meeting (see 2019 agenda).
2023 Meeting -- During the 2023 Past2Future meeting IMAG and the MSM continued the digital twin discussions, see 2023 Digital Twin Breakout.
IMAG/MSM Digital Twins Interest Group - The IMAG wiki serves as a resource for meetings, reports, publications, activities collected by IMAG and the MSM Consortium relevant to digital twins, see Digital Twins wiki page.
Digital Twins & NASEM Report
In December 2023, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) released the consensus report on Foundational Research Gaps And Future Directions For Digital Twins. This study was sponsored by IMAG agencies and presents a comprehensive report on the foundational research and resources needed to support the development of digital twin technologies.
The NASEM report highlights a systems of systems approach that epitomizes robust engineering methods for designing, building, testing and sustaining digital twin technologies and solutions for various domains.
The NASEM definition of a digital twin, requires several key components and criteria, and offers robust challenges for the research community to address.
Proceed to the 2024 Pre-Meeting Exercises