Scenarios for digital twin deployment in healthcare facilities management

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to focus on identifying key health-care issues amenable to digital twin (DT) approach. It starts with a description of the concept and enabling technologies of a DT and then discusses potential applications of DT solutions in healthcare facilities management (FM) using four different scenarios. The scenario planning focused on monitoring and controlling the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system in real-time; monitoring indoor air quality (IAQ) to monitor the performance of medical equipment; monitoring and tracking pulsed light for SARS-Cov-2; and monitoring the performance of medical equipment affected by radio frequency interference (RFI). Design/methodology/approach The importance of a healthcare facility, its systems and equipment necessitates an effective FM practice. However, the FM practices adopted have several areas for improvement, including the lack of effective real-time updates on performance status, asset tracking, bi-directional coordination of changes in the physical facilities and the computational resources that support and monitor them. Consequently, there is a need for more intelligent and holistic FM systems. We propose a DT which possesses the key features, such as real-time updates and bi-directional coordination, which can address the shortcomings in healthcare FM. DT represents a virtual model of a physical component and replicates the physical data and behavior in all instances. The replication is attained using sensors to obtain data from the physical component and replicating the physical component's behavior through data analysis and simulation. This paper focused on identifying key healthcare issues amenable to DT approach. It starts with a description of the concept and enabling technologies of a DT and then discusses potential applications of DT solutions in healthcare FM using four different scenarios. Findings The scenarios were validated by industry experts and concluded that the scenarios offer significant potential benefits for the deployment of DT in healthcare FM such as monitoring facilities’ performance in real-time and improving visualization by integrating the 3D model. Research limitations/implications In addition to inadequate literature addressing healthcare FM, the study was also limited to one of the healthcare facilities of a large public university, and the scope of the study was limited to IAQ including pressure, relative humidity, carbon dioxide and temperature. Additionally, the study showed the potential benefits of DT application in healthcare FM using various scenarios that DT experts validated. Practical implications The study shows the practical implication using the various validated scenarios and identified enabling technologies. The combination and implementation of those mentioned above would create a system that can effectively help manage facilities and improve facilities' performances. Social implications The only identifiable social solution is that the proposed system in this study can manually be overridden to prevent absolute autonomous control of the smart system in cases when needed. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study that has addressed healthcare FM using the DT approach. This research is an excerpt from an ongoing dissertation.