Digital twins in healthcare: Applications, technologies, simulations, and future trends

The healthcare industry has witnessed significant interest in applying DTs (DTs), due to technological advancements. DTs are virtual replicas of physical entities that adapt to real-time data, enabling predictions of their physical counterparts. DT technology enhances understanding of disease occurrence, enabling more accurate diagnoses and treatments. Integrating emerging technologies like big data, cloud computing, Virtual Reality (VR), and internet-of-things (IoT) provides a solid foundation for DT implementation in healthcare. However, defining DTs within the healthcare context still has become increasingly challenging. Therefore, exploring the potential of DTs in healthcare contributes to research, emphasizing their transformative impact on personalized medicine and precision healthcare. In this study, we present diverse healthcare applications of DTs, including healthcare 4.0, cardiac analysis, monitoring and management, data privacy, socio-ethical, and surgical. Moreover, this paper discusses the software and simulations of DTs that can be used in these applications of healthcare, as well as, the future trends of DTs in healthcare. This article is categorized under: Application Areas > Health Care Technologies > Computational Intelligence.