A dynamic digital In-Silico or a mirror representation of a living or non-living physical being that bridges the physical and virtual realm, coherently transmitting the data to sync and exist concurrently.
The entity could be anything including processes, people, places, systems, and devices. The “Digital Twin” of a body enables real-time aspects with its operation and monitoring simulations.
The idea, however, is not new. NASA, for one, has run complex simulations for decades now.
But, with the modern world techs like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Internet Of Things, we are up to see some absolute disruption in digital trends covering multiple sectors.
A digital twin is useful in simulating real-world conditions and analyzing how it responds to changes and thus improve operations and assess with significant alterations.
Moreover, digital twin technology has consistently been included in all of Garner’s list of “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends” since 2017.
The Twin technology now has prevalently been embraced by Manufacturing, Smart Cities, Retail, Automotive, Oil & Gas, Aerospace, Mining, and Healthcare.
The potential is massive in each of these areas. Especially in Healthcare, where right now, along with data from IOT, digital twin technology is going to play an essential part in reforming the health and medical sector.
Digital Twin Technology Benefits For Healthcare
Defining the new “Healthy”
A seemingly healthy individual may ignore the little indications of presumably normal symptoms. The digital twin tracks a person’s records crosscheck them against registered patterns and analyze the disease indications.
Also, the data could produce digital virtualization of a typical healthy patient and helps in defining the new standards for being “healthy”.
Patient Monitoring
Virtual patients help monitor the patient after which it is modeled.
It uses adaptive analytics and algorithms to produce accurate outcomes with continuous updating of data collection capabilities & curating.
Together with modern technologies, the virtual twin of patients helps the physicians in Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM).
Better access to healthcare for the patients providing peace of mind and daily assurance for the family.
Cost savings
A hospital measured a 900 % improvement in cost savings after implementing digital-twin tech to remove problems in patient flow. Moreover, the new technology may cost more in its initial stage.
But the savings due to its services produces a lifetime growth for the hospitals and organizations.
- This would help the hospital in assigning the workforce & inventories like new instruments, beds, rooms, where they’re actually needed.
- Using the digital twin technology within a hospital, assists in predicting emergencies like cardiopulmonary and respiratory arrest, thereby helping the hospital organization in better precautionary maintenance while providing personalized health care cost.
- Creates proper patient-specific treatment plans.
Personalized Healthcare
By fabricating a virtual twin of a hospital, administrators, nurses and doctors can get a robust, real-time analysis of ins and outs of patients, giving them a better schedule of workflows.
A proper workflow helps in reducing queue time for the patients while managing appointments and accurate inventory consumption and maintenance.
Even for doctors like cardiologists as well the tech comes in handy to take care of each case individually, resulting in better output.
The “digital heart twin” developed by the Healthcare company- Siemens Healthineers, for example, using Artificial Intelligence, assists doctors in making a more accurate diagnosis of how differently the medicines affect the body of patients personally.
The technology could also be in use for determining the risk zones by analyzing the Epidemiology data to track any particular infection.
Also Read: 5 Ways How AI (Artificial Intelligence) is Transforming Healthcare Industry
Other elemental forces that help Digital Twin Technology breathe life to the Healthcare sector include:
Internet of Things,
Software Analytics,
Machine Learning,
Spatial elements network graphs,
and with the help of big data, the created virtual simulation model modifies and updates itself accordingly.
The companies that are now successfully providing the Digital twin technology in Healthcare include GE Healthcare, Philips, Siemens, Alacris, IBM, and Microsoft under the Azure umbrella.
However, the twin technology does have some setbacks and challenges of establishing it, but sure has a promising road ahead.
And, with the insights conceived by Digital Twins, the healthcare organizations could finally see an inefficiency pattern and gain a better grasp of why it occurred in the first place. In turn, creating innovative practices and quelling the reoccurrence of predicaments.
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