Virtual You is a panoramic account of efforts by scientists around the world to build digital twins of human beings, from cells and tissues to organs and whole bodies. These virtual copies will usher in a new era of personalized medicine, one in which your digital twin can help predict your risk of disease, participate in virtual drug trials, shed light on the diet and lifestyle changes that are best for you, and help identify therapies to enhance your well-being and extend your lifespan鈥攂ut thorny challenges remain.
In this deeply illuminating book, Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield reveal what it will take to build a virtual, functional copy of a person in five steps. Along the way, they take you on a fantastic voyage through the complexity of the human body, describing the latest scientific and technological advances鈥攆rom multiscale modeling to extraordinary new forms of computing鈥攖hat will make 鈥渧irtual you鈥� a reality, while also considering the ethical questions inherent to realizing truly predictive medicine.
With an incisive foreword by Nobel Prize鈥搘inning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan, Virtual You is science at its most astounding, showing how our virtual twins and even whole populations of virtual humans promise to transform our health and our lives in the coming decades.
Awards and Recognition
- A Financial Times Best Summer Book
- A Financial Times Best Book of the Year: Science
"Wide-ranging investigation into efforts by scientists to create digitised 鈥渢wins鈥� of human beings that promise a future of predictive medicine, but also ethical challenges."鈥�Financial Times
"Virtual You is the most comprehensive and comprehensible account so far of the way in which the revolution in computing and data is starting to transform human biology and medicine."鈥擟live Cookson, Financial Times
"[An] immensely thought-provoking book."鈥擭ick Smith, Engineering and Technology
"Virtual You鈥榮 scope is as epic as its vision, taking us through medical history from Vesalius to Venter, and from the Antikythera mechanism to supercomputers and beyond. This means the concepts come at you thick and fast, although as a non-mathematician, I found the explanations refreshingly clear."鈥擟laire Ainsworth, New Scientist
"Computer simulations are coming to play a leading role in many fields of science. Science writer Highfield and computer scientist Coveney show in vivid examples how medical researchers are creating digital twins of individual patients and then using these virtual humans to guide treatments for a wide range of diseases."鈥擟live Cookson, Financial Times
鈥淭ransformative鈥攁 brilliant vision of how building your digital double might just save your life.鈥濃�擧annah Fry, author of Hello World
鈥淏iotech is advancing fast; so is computer power. This book鈥檚 authors, well versed in both these fields, highlight the amazing potential of research that blends them together. Researchers are already constructing digital models of cells and organs and using them to do virtual experiments, without putting real people at risk. In a more futuristic vein, the authors speculate about the eventual goal of digitally twinning the most complex known entities in the universe鈥攅ntire human beings. This engrossing book will broaden intellectual horizons鈥攁nd deserves wide readership.鈥濃�擬artin Rees, author of On the Future
鈥淭his stimulating and balanced book argues that biology is both a chemical and an informational science, and that building informational models will be critical for the future progress of biology and medicine. This clear, readable account from Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield shows how digital models not only inform us about how life works, but also how this knowledge can be used to transform how we treat human disease.鈥濃�擯aul Nurse, Nobel Laureate and Director of the Francis Crick Institute
鈥�Virtual You provides a dazzling guide to the frontiers of modern science鈥攆rom the limits of mathematics, AI, and algorithms to the latest in genetics, deep learning, and quantum computing鈥攖o show how digital twins of people will herald a new era of medicine, one that is truly personalized and predictive.鈥濃�擥eorge Em Karniadakis, Brown University
鈥�Virtual You gives a fascinating and accessible overview of the many global collaborative efforts to create a digital twin of a human being, and looks toward a future where the vision of P4 medicine鈥攑redictive, personalized, preventive, and participatory鈥攈as become a reality.鈥濃�擳ony Hey, coauthor of The New Quantum Universe
鈥淭he human body is a collection of seven octillion atoms (seven followed by twenty-seven zeros), and if we could simulate their life dance in a computer, we could make predictions about our health. In this visionary book, Coveney and Highfield show how this dream may come true, revealing the science of complexity at its zenith. A must-read for anyone who is curious about the coming revolution in predictive medicine.鈥濃�擲auro Succi, Italian Institute of Technology
鈥淭his timely and highly informative book should be a thought provoker for a large and diverse readership, including the future research leaders and pioneers who will drive this field forward.鈥濃�擬ark Girolami, University of Cambridge and The Alan Turing Institute
鈥淏eing able to use an individual鈥檚 medical and fitness tracker data to make 鈥榟ealthcasts鈥� is a game changer. I can鈥檛 wait to see my own virtual human come to digital life!鈥濃�擜ndrea Townsend-Nicholson, University College London
