The Use of Digital Twin Technology in Healthcare

Project description

Outline

• A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical object or a process. Capable of collecting information from the real environments, a digital twin may represent, validate, and simulate the physical twin’s present and future behaviour.In healthcare, the concept of a digital twin is currently concentrated in a patient’s twin and precision medicine (Katsoulakis et al., 2024).  It can also be used from the perspective of modelling the technical debt in healthcare, and therefore has the potential to be transformative for securing infrastructure across healthcare systems.

Aim of Project

• The project aims to explore the use of Digital Twin technology in health care including for security of medical devices and legacy technologies.

Scope of Project and Methods/Equipment

• This project requires research skills. It is anticipated it will explore some or all the following questions, in discussion and agreement with the supervisor:

1. How is digital twin technology used in healthcare?
2. Does digital twin technology improve patient outcomes, if so how?
3. What opportunities does digital twins provide to improve patient outcomes?
4. What is the health care business impact of digital twin technology?
5. How would digital twin technology be used from a security perspective in healthcare?

Impact/Relevance

• A comprehensive report on the use of digital twin technology in healthcare will be a valuable resource to the healthcare community, businesses and government providing understanding and actionable insights into the issues and the impacts.

Timeline

• Honours / 18 Unit Masters / 9 Unit Masters (MIT)

Further information

• References The concept of Digital Twin was introduced in the following paper: Grieves, M. Digital Twin: Manufacturing Excellence through Virtual Factory Replication; A White Paper; Michael Grieves, LLC: Melbourne, FL, USA, 2014.Katsoulakis, E., Wang, Q., Wu, H., Shahriyari, L., Fletcher, R., Liu, J., . . . Deng, J. (2024). Digital twins for health: a scoping review. NPJ Digital Medicine, 7(1), 77. doi:10.1038/s41746-024-01073-0Vallée A. Digital twin for healthcare systems. Front Digit Health. 2023 Sep 7;5:1253050. doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2023.1253050. PMID: 37744683; PMCID: PMC10513171.
• https://news.flinders.edu.au/blog/2020/02/11/new-digital-health-design-lab-at-tonsley/
• https://www.flinders.edu.au/flinders-digital-health-research-centre
• https://www.flinders.edu.au/people/trish.williams

Assumed knowledge

Basic research skills required.

Note: You need to register interest in projects from different supervisors (not a number of projects with the one supervisor).
You must also contact each supervisor directly to discuss both the project details and your suitability to undertake the project.