Towards Healthcare Digital Twin Architecture

Digital Twins (DTs) have the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry by offering effective and efficient healthcare services. However, there is a lack of clarity regarding the challenges pertaining to the creation of healthcare DTs from the components, design, and operational requirements perspective. In this paper, we address these gaps by examining the healthcare challenges and presenting the groundbreaking applications of DTs in healthcare to identify how they can address the healthcare challenges. We then discuss healthcare DTs' design and operational requirements, focusing on considerations that ensure their effective implementation and adoption. In accordance with the requirements, we propose an architecture for implementing healthcare DTs, covering the steps of building DTs from data collection and integration to DT model creation and deployment. Moreover, we present the proof of concept as a prototypical implementation of healthcare DT. Finally, we discuss the open challenges of healthcare DTs and future research directions.