Future outlook on the materialisation, expectations and implementation of Digital Twins in healthcare

In this paper we examine how experts in digital transformation of healthcare envision the application of Digital Twins. The concept of a Digital Twin refers to a digital replica of potential and actual physical assets, processes, people, places, systems and devices that can be used for various purposes including scientific experiments, simulations and prediction of intervention outcomes. Digital Twins are an emerging technological vision and while evocative as a term it holds different promises and connotations for different application areas and may evolve in very different directions. In order to examine how these directions can develop and impact healthcare we used the Delphi method to reach a consensus among experts on three different research questions we have put forward, namely how experts see the materialisation, expectations and implementation of a Digital Twin in healthcare. Our main conclusion is that Digital Twins are seen as enabling preventive healthcare and trial-and-error approaches to support personalised medicine and/or patient centred care.