Digital twins in healthcare: Taking the guesswork out of patient health

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  Quantumrun Foresight
• June 9, 2022

Insight summary

Digital twins, virtual replicas of physical objects or systems, are transforming various industries by optimizing performance and enhancing the design and quality of projects through real-time data collection. In the healthcare sector, they facilitate more accurate diagnoses and personalized treatment plans, with applications ranging from virtual surgical trials using VR platforms to the creation of custom medical tools through 3D printing. However, while they offer a range of benefits including potentially reshaping healthcare education and emergency preparedness, they also present challenges such as the need for revised regulatory frameworks and a shift in labor market demands.

Digital twin context

Digital twins are virtual representations of an object or system across its life cycle. Developing them requires an accurate understanding and representation of how these systems function and the role these objects play in the system. They further collect real-time data about an object’s structure via sensors and other wireless technologies, thereby improving the design and quality of projects and lowering maintenance costs. When applied to the healthcare space, digital twins may produce a revolution in healthcare education, training, and surgical preparation.

Digital twins come in three different forms: stand-alone, duplicated, and enhanced. A stand-alone digital twin is a virtual replica of an individual product or piece of equipment and can help monitor and optimize the performance of individual assets, people, and other physical resources. Duplicated digital twins help to monitor and optimize the use of a combination of related, discrete digital twins, such as virtual models in a multi-part system, like in cars. Enhanced digital twins are virtual models of complex and broad entities, such as a city, and are constituted by digital twins of their constituent parts. 

Knowing an object or system's unique risk variables is a significant benefit of having a digital clone. A digital twin might use a person's whole genetic background, as well as tailored environmental and behavioral data, to help said person better anticipate, avoid, and prepare for future health risks. Digital clones can also help with diagnosis accuracy and speed. An example of their application within the health field is Hewlett Packard using a supercomputer to develop digital models of the brain for research purposes in collaboration with Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausannes (EPFL).

Disruptive impact

The construction, automotive, and aerospace industries, among others, have implemented the use of digital twins to manage, evaluate, and improve systems. However, digital twins are now increasingly being applied to people, opening up exciting new use cases in the healthcare field. Digital twins can combine data from scanning documents, lab results, genetic markers, and measurements to enhance the assessment of known and unknown diseases. In addition, they can provide healthcare officials with enough data to possibly anticipate specific reactions to selected treatments by using a patient's pharmacogenomics data to recommend a personalized treatment plan. 

A large amount of data can be collected through the use of health monitors. There are also gadgets that can track a person's health parameters from head to toe. These devices can provide information that helps healthcare professionals and patients to make more informed decisions. However, these devices are also capable of providing a patient with a disjointed image of their digital self.

Meanwhile, surgeons can use scans of a patient’s body to generate digital twins of their organs and body parts and use these twins to practice surgeries in virtual reality or use artificial intelligence systems to find the best instruments and techniques—all before a procedure is carried out in the live surgical room. Furthermore, digital twins of healthcare facilities can enhance emergency preparedness, enhance building durability and reliability, and identify causes of waste or cost overruns. Forecasting bed shortages, regulating patient flow, and limiting infection transmission are other possible applications of digital twins. They can further allow for digital stress tests to be performed to assess how an institution would fare in a disaster, such as a pandemic.

Implications of digital twins in healthcare  

Wider implications of digital twins in healthcare may include:

• Hospitals and healthcare providers leveraging data analytics to understand individualized risk factors in specific procedures and medication assignments, which could lead to improved patient care outcomes. 
• The development of diagnostic tools that are capable of more accurate and rapid diagnosis, thereby enhancing the quality of patient care. 
• Surgeons utilizing virtual reality (VR) platforms to test different surgical approaches before undertaking a major operation, which could significantly reduce the risks associated with surgeries. 
• Hospitals adopting 3D printing technologies to create custom medical tools tailored to the unique physiology or injury of a patient, which could revolutionize personalized medicine. 
• A shift in labor market demands, with a growing need for professionals skilled in operating and maintaining advanced technological systems, including data analysts, VR specialists, and 3D printing technicians. 
• Governments potentially revisiting regulatory frameworks to accommodate the rapid advancements in healthcare technology, which might involve setting new standards for patient data privacy, the certification of 3D printed medical tools, and the accreditation of virtual surgical training programs.
• The emergence of telemedicine technologies that facilitate virtual consultations or patient monitoring.

Questions to consider

• Does your organization employ digital twins in its operations? How so?
• In addition to healthcare, where else can digital cloning be used to improve the lives of people?