PNAS Nexus

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.