Developing a Framework for Multi-Scale Modeling of the Digital Patient

The Digital Patient is an analytic platform that has the potential to transform personal and public health care, pharmaceutical and device development, research, and patient and professional education. It is the ultimate Big Data project in healthcare; however, its power will derive not from the volume of data, but from the integration of disparate sources of data into valid and reliable intelligence—about biological processes, social context and treatment efficacy. That integration, in turn, is largely dependent on the evolving theoretical approaches known as systems biology and convergence that lead to the successful meshing of multi-scale models. This paper provides an overview of the digital patient, the domains of systems biology and multi-scale modeling, the evolving efforts to promote convergence and the implications for personalized medicine.