Perspective paper: Digital Twins as catalysts for Whole Person Health Mind Body Medicine in Integrative Oncology
As AI-based Digital Twins move from concept to reality, they are increasingly being discussed as one of the next frontiers of personalized medicine. In oncology, their promise for far future medicine lies in combining multiple sources of data to simulate disease trajectories, support treatment coordination, and help guide more individualized care.
But there is an important question hiding beneath the technology: What data will we be choosing to include?
Today, most Digital Twins are designed to model a specific organ, disease, or biological process, not an entire person. In oncology, research largely focuses on tumors, imaging, genomics, and treatment response. These advances are important, but they capture only part of what shapes health.
For people living with and beyond cancer, health is also influenced by sleep, stress, physical activity, nutrition, relationships, self care behaviors, symptoms, and quality of life. A true whole-person Digital Twin remains a future aspiration rather than a present reality.
In this new perspective paper, we explore how Digital Twins could help extend precision oncology beyond tumor-directed care and support a broader vision of Whole Person Health Mind Body Medicine. The goal is to create systems that better reflect the complexity of people's lives, including lifestyle factors, patient-reported outcomes, mind body interventions, and survivorship experiences.
Integrative Oncology has an opportunity to help shape this future by contributing high-quality data, interoperable standards, digital competencies, and ethical frameworks that protect patient autonomy and human-centered care.
Full publication (open access)
Witt CM. Digital Twins as catalysts for Whole Person Health Mind Body Medicine in Integrative Oncology. Frontiers in Oncology. 2026; 16:1868314.