As per recent market research by Transparency Market Research, the digital twin in the healthcare industry's size stood at US$ 448.9 Mn in 2021 and is likely to surpass US$ 5.3 Bn by the end of 2031. The report stated that the industry is expanding owing to a greater emphasis on value-based care and population health management.
Today, digital twins are extensively being used not only in healthcare but also in manufacturing, automotive, urban planning and even power-generating equipment.
But what do we mean by digital twin technology and how does it work? Let’s try to understand.
What is Digital Twin Technology?
Digital twin technology virtually represents an object or system spanning its lifecycle, updating it from real-time data, and using simulation, machine learning and reasoning to enable decision-making. So it looks and behaves like its real-world counterpart so it is possible to predict possible performance results and issues that the real-world system or object might undergo.
Types of Digital Twins
The types of digital twins depend on the level of product magnification with the area of the application being the biggest factor. Different types of digital twins can co-exist within a system or process, depending on the complexity or the type of task.
Here are the most common types of digital twins and how they are applied.
How Does a Digital Twin Work?
For example, let’s say that the object being studied is an MRI machine. It will be outfitted with various sensors related to vital areas of its functionality. These sensors produce data about different aspects of the object’s performance, such as image quality, specific absorption rate, signal-to-noise ratio etc.
This data will then be relayed to a processing system and applied to the digital copy.
Once equipped with such data, the digital twin can be used to run simulations, study performance issues and generate possible improvements, all with the goal of generating valuable insights. These can then be applied back to the original physical object.
Advantages of Digital Twins in Healthcare
There are multiple benefits of using digital twins in the healthcare industry. Here we list a few of them:
Better R&D
Digital twin technology helps with more effective research and design of products. The abundance of data created informs better decision-making based on likely performance outcomes. This information can also lead to insights that help companies make necessary product refinements before starting development or production.
Patient Simulations and Monitoring
Digital twin technology can create digital twins for each patient’s body, physiology and medical history. This can help precision testing of thousands of treatments, leading to better-informed decisions to improve patient outcomes and taking personalized medicine into a new era. And together with modern technologies, the digital twin of patients can also help the physicians in Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM).
Medical Device Utilization
Digital twins of medical devices can give providers real-time visibility into how these increasingly connected machines are utilized, their performance and the need for repair - especially, before a critical breakdown puts patients at risk. This is more essential with robotics and other high-value medical devices, which must be optimized for both patient care and revenue.
Efficient Healthcare Systems
Digital twins of hospitals can provide detailed insights to administrators, nurses and doctors, helping them better schedule their workflows to reduce patient waiting times while managing appointments and accurate inventory consumption and maintenance.
However, the digital twin technology also has certain setbacks and challenges of establishing it. We will explore them in a separate blog soon.
The Future of Digital Twin Technology
Currently, companies like GE Healthcare, Philips, Siemens, Alacris, IBM, and Microsoft under the Azure umbrella are providing this technology coupled with more advancements in AI and ML.
So we know that a fundamental change to existing operating models is clearly happening.
The future of digital twins looks limitless, due to the fact that increasing amounts of cognitive skills are constantly being devoted to their use. So digital twins are constantly learning new skills and capabilities, which means they can continue to generate the insights needed to make products better and processes more efficient.
We will be closely monitoring the Digital Twin technology and writing on the latest news and trends on this. So stay tuned!
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