Innovation Interview: MedInsights on Building Molecular Digital Twins for Health
We had the chance to speak with Soham Saha, Co-founder and CEO of MedInsights, who recently secured Eureka Eurostars funding for their innovative project, CardioTwin. This AI-driven solution aims to improve the way cardiometabolic diseases and related multi-morbidities are understood and managed.
1.What sparked the idea behind CardioTwin, and why did you choose cardiometabolic diseases as the starting point?
Our initial idea for “CardioTwin” came from a meeting with Paolo at the REXPO24 conference in Munich. We were pitching the concept of using our AI models to analyze patient datasets for metabolic indications and hoping that people notice our prolific profiles. That is when Paolo decided to swipe right on our idea and introduced us to his incredible trove of patient data. For two decades, Professor Parini and his team had been curating the Lp(A) Stockholm and STRIREG datasets, which contain multimodal data from over 2 million patients. We were thrilled by this massive amount of information. It was like he had been saving up all the best patient data just for us. His lab’s expertise in using network pharmacology to identify biomarkers and then validating them in preclinical and translation models was the perfect match for our AI models and its future validation. It was like we both had the missing piece to a puzzle and we finally found each other.
2. In simple terms, how does a “molecular digital twin” help doctors and patients manage complex conditions more effectively?
A “molecular digital twin” is a detailed virtual molecular model of a patient’s health, built using data encompassing various sources like multimodal datasets from more than 2 million indexed patient datapoints. This virtual replica helps doctors and patients manage CMD with multimorbidities more effectively by allowing them to predict, test, and personalize care in a safe, simulated environment. For doctors, a digital twin can simulate how a disease might progress or how a specific treatment will affect a patient, enabling them to make more informed decisions. For patients, the digital twin helps them to better understand their health by providing a clear, visual representation of their condition and the potential outcomes of lifestyle changes. This enhanced understanding empowers patients to take a more active role in their care and make better choices for their health.
3. How did the collaboration with Karolinska University Hospital come about, and what makes that partnership unique?
The collaboration culmination is a relatively long story. After our initial meetup at REXPO24, Soham and Paolo remained in close contact, discussing their passion for research, food and sailing. Finally, the collaboration was brought closer when Paolo was hosted by MedInsights in Paris for a Key Opinion Leader (KOL) feedback on MedInsights activities and impact in October, 2024. This was the time when we decided to talk in more detail on shared projects using network pharmacology, graph theory and emerging AI technologies in CMDs. The data from Paolo and his team’s work is fascinating in its scope, complexities and possibilities, and ultimately we started looking for funding opportunities to bring CardioTwin to life. And hence, CardioTwin was born.
The collaboration marks a lot of “firsts”. Among them, the most promising aspect is the ability to work with world leading experts in CMD guiding the development and implementation of the CardioTwin project. It is definitely one of the largest and most complete molecular twin built in CMDs with datasets as diverse as biological, clinical and sociological. We believe that AI should be a trusted companion for everyone, but primarily its guided by human-first implementation. Our core idea is to remain patient and physician centric in all aspects of the development of the project. We strongly believe in the principle that “We want AI to do our laundry and dishes while we innovate for groundbreaking discoveries in health”. Some narratives suggest “AI could replace physicians”, but we firmly believe healthcare professionals are the central defense against any disease, with AI serving as a crucial tool in their arsenal. CardioTwin is also one of the first French-Swedish collaborations of this magnitude when we consider the scale of the impact of such EU initiatives, marking a big scale of European level scientific alignment between one of the largest hospitals in the world and a very lean and thin private AI-driven biotech. Finally, CardioTwin also demonstrates a precision medicine approach towards multimorbidities observed in CMDs, the incidence of which is steadily increasing over the years. We achieve this precision approach via patient stratification and explainability of our AI models.
4. What did receiving the Eurostars grant mean for the project?
Projects in healthcare are born everyday, more so in AI and genAI driven “magic bullet” solutions. Something that stood out among us is the observation that when Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio, a few thousands of radio manufacturers came into existence but only less than 10 survived. Evidently, it is the same situation in healthcare today, with thousands of AI companies cropping up in every corner, promising to diagnose difficult to treat diseases, predict all medical and biological mechanisms, design the best drugs and even treat a few diseases with mobile apps. We have always wanted to be among the ones that thrive longer, and therefore, it was important to collaborate and drive the project with close alignment to physicians, researchers and patients. Securing the Eurostars grant, quite simply, reinforce this idea and provide MedInsights and all its collaborators solid ground to build something meaningful to the ecosystem of cardiometabolic diseases with multimorbidities.
5. What was your experience like working with the Evolution Europe team?
The Evolution Europe team has been, quite frankly, a revelation of sorts. Right from meeting the team (Raphaelle) at Biofit 2024 in Lille, the support we received from the entire team has been commendable. The evaluation of the potential of the project, the quick turnaround time, writing the grant itself right up to helping us structure the Collaboration Agreement, has been truly amazing for our team. It eased up a lot of pressure from all the members of MedInsights while facilitating communication across Sweden and France. Special mention to Santiago, Antonio and Raphaelle for working closely with us on this project. We hope to continue our close collaboration further with other innovative applications.
6. Where do you see CardioTwin in a few years—in hospitals, in research, or perhaps even in patients’ hands?
The future of CardioTwin is a future of hope guided by human ingenuity and clinical oversight. It is a future where we move from a reactive model of care to a more proactive model, in short, we don’t just treat diseases, we prevent them. CardioTwin is a catalyst to this transformation while the ship is steered by the healthcare professionals. In a few years, we envision CardioTwin as an indispensable research powerhouse and a trusted digital partner for doctors, allowing them to run simulations on hundreds of molecular digital twins to quickly and ethically test a wide range of drug dosages and combinations for conditions like CMD and associated multimorbidities in individual patients or cohorts. This is the future of personalized medicine. Within hospitals, CardioTwin will be a central nervous system for cardiometabolic care, continuously monitoring each twin and providing predictive analysis to prevent emergencies before they even have a chance to develop. This will also be an invaluable tool for hospital management to optimize workflows, efficient resource allocation, and even predict staffing needs. Finally in the near future, with the guidance of their physicians and healthcare professionals, patients will be able to have a version of their CardioTwin on their personal devices, bridging the gap between the clinical and the personal, helping them to not just manage their condition, but to live healthier and more informed lives.