A Digital Twin Based Approach in Healthcare

A Digital Twin is envisioned as a natural evolution with regard to the integration of physical and virtual environments with application in various domains such as organization management, products, services, e-health, business intelligence. It consists of a virtual model of a physical object, which dynamically pairs the physical entity with it’s digital replica. The e-health applications are heterogeneous and complex by nature, having a great variability, so is difficult to be managed and monitored through a unique ICT system. A Digital Twin is envisioned to connect the physical world associated to healthcare and the cyber world. Relevant patient and hospital environment information are stored in the Electronic Health Record (EHR). There is an expectation that the traditional Electronic Medical Records, EHR, will be enhanced or even replaced by Digital Twins. This paper discusses a generic Digital Twin based approach in healthcare, which extends the EHR capabilities, within a framework of interoperability that enables the possibility of developing complex e-health applications is presented. Physical collected healthcare information, EHR data and Digital Twin processed outputs are available as services for the users, within a Service Oriented Architecture. The data traffic with the Digital Twin – EHR framework is realized through Web services, which are able to assure security, safety and privacy of the medical transmitted information, in a QoS approach.