Complementary roles of virtual and real trials in medicine: An interplay of virtuous spirals
Abstract Virtual trials provide medical knowledge and practical methods for generating evidence through computational methods. But extending beyond those advantages, they offer epistemic opportunities to add mechanistic explainability to predictive inference of real trials. Relating the distinct contributions and ontology of virtual and real trials enables a transformative convergence of biological and clinical insights that they embody.
Authors
- Kristina Bliznakova (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-5936)
- Rie Tanaka (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9476-5287)
- Hongkai Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1813-2162)
- Ehsan Samei (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7451-3309)
- Mojtaba Lashgari (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5307-3495)
- Liesbeth Vancoillie (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5103-0758)
- Alejandro F. Frangi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2675-528X)
- Michael Wilde (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2216-0115)
- Arezoo Zakeri (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6011-2333)
- Paul E. Kinahan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6461-3306)
- Ehsan Abadi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9123-5854)
- Dimitra G. Darambara (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4960-8207)
- Ann-Katherine Carton
- Hilde Bosmans
- Predrag R Bakic
Institutions
- Kanazawa University (JP)
- Medical University of Varna (BG)
- Medway School of Pharmacy (GB)
- Duke University (US)
- Lund University (SE)
- General Electric (Spain) (ES)
- University of Washington (US)
- Dalian University of Technology (CN)
- University of Manchester (GB)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Breakthrough (US)
- Virtual High School (US)
- Chelsea Hospital (US)
- KU Leuven (BE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- PNAS Nexus
- Published
- 2026-09-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag310
- Primary Topic
- Philosophy and History of Science
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00