In engineering, the concept of ‘Digital Twins’ has gained attention during the last decade. A Digital Twin is a virtual representation of a physical object, which is continuously fed with data from embedded sensors and software. Hereby, the Digital Twin tightly connects the physical system with its computer model. Digital Twins are, for examples, widely used to continuously monitor and forecast the health of jet engines. This allows airlines to identify how and where potential problems could occur, whereby predictive maintenance is deployed to keep the system healthy.
In this blog, I will explain what the possibilities and corresponding benefits and risks are for this technology in the healthcare industry. The enhancement of computational power and molecular readout technologies has increased the potential of ‘virtual patients’ to continuously track health and lifestyle parameters. As of now, the digital models used in healthcare are quite partial (such as twin models of the heart) and basic. Yet, already signs of the effectiveness of these models can be observed as well as the benefits it could bring in the future.
First, the data-rich Digital Twins would allow for the creation of a more detailed picture of the patients which results in faster and more accurate identification of actual or potential disease states. Hereby, a shift to more preventive solutions could result in significant health improvement and hence reductions of health care costs. Second, the multidimensional properties of the digital twins could allow practitioners to more accurately compare a patient’s health with the health stats of similar patients. Since clustering can be based on more elements than, for example, age and gender, deviations from the ‘normal’ can be identified faster and more accurately.
Yet three main societal concerns are also worth noting. First of all, Digital Twins could raise inequality since developing a digital version of yourself could be very costly. Hence, the benefits of improved health and possible life extension could potentially only be accesses by wealthy people. Second, the Digital Twin could lead to self-fulfilling prophecy mechanisms where knowing that you could potentially become sick in the future will make you indeed feel sick and weak. Thirdly, it is of great importance to ensure data protection. Data leaks could quickly offset the potential benefits of Digital Twins, as for example, insurance companies could use the data to modify the insurance policies for individuals in their favor
The future will tell whether we will be able to effectively govern this emerging technology in the healthcare industry; thereby significant health and cost benefits can be obtained by actively managing the associated concerns.
Sources:
Bruynseels, K., Santoni de Sio, F., & van den Hoven, J. (2018). Digital twins in health care: Ethical implications of an emerging engineering paradigm. Frontiers in genetics, 9, 31.
Mussomeli, A. (2018). Expecting Digital Twins. Deloitte Insights. Retrieved from: https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/signals-for-strategists/understanding-digital-twin-technology.html
Van Houten, H. (2018). The Rise of the Digital Twin: How Healthcare Can Benefit. Philips Research. Retrieved from:https://www.philips.com/a-w/research/blog/the-rise-of-the-digital-twin-how-healthcare-can-benefit.html
Hi Cas!
I really liked your blog, thanks for posting it! I found particularly interesting how you pointed out a societal problem like the increased inequality due to the possible expensive nature of Digital Twins. I want to add to this point that this might not only add to the unequal distribution of health benefits.
There is a rising interest in the use of cognitive enhancers, that could potentially make an individual more intelligent and capable. However, a lot of individual data is needed to properly finetune these enhancements since individual differences affect their functioning. Therefore, I believe that the possession of a Digital Twin could not only result in health benefits for wealthy individuals but also, for example, could enhance and help monitor human characteristics like intelligence. This can potentially be revolutionizing and can help mitigate the future expected gap between humans and AI and promote human development in diverse ways.
What do you think? Do you think this trade-off is worth it?