DNA Medicine Institute to Support UVM’s $38M Digital Twin Effort for Treating Critically Ill Patients

Funded through Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), UVM via Principal Investigator Gary An, M.D. has received a research and development contract worth up to $38 million to develop artificial intelligence-powered digital twins to help clinicians personalize treatment for critically ill patients. The research award is the largest in UVM history. The project is part of ARPA-H's Critical Illness Immunological Reprogramming and Control Point Learning Engine (CIRCLE) program. If successful, researchers believe the technology could reduce intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay by at least 25 percent. Currently, 4.6 million Americans are treated in ICUs annually, costing up to $70 billion each year. 

DMI will be providing point-of-care measurements and technology for frequent monitoring of critical illness cell surface and soluble mediator biomarkers. DMI will work alongside UVM, Wake Forest, University of Alabama, Washington University School of Medicine, and Inflammasense to develop the digital twin model. Dr. An’s project, known as ReSCUED, or Reprogramming Severe Critical Illness Using Extensible Digital Twins, seeks to address one of medicine's most persistent challenges and correct the disordered immune response that drives diseases of the ICU, such as severe trauma, burns, or sepsis. The effort is a 5-year, milestone-based approach to develop and validate the approach with critically ill patients.