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Review
. 2023 Jan 3:9:20552076221149651.
doi: 10.1177/20552076221149651. eCollection 2023 Jan-Dec.

Digital twin in healthcare: Recent updates and challenges

Tianze Sun  1   2 , Xiwang He  3 , Zhonghai Li  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Digital twin in healthcare: Recent updates and challenges

Tianze Sun et al. Digit Health. .

Abstract

As simulation is playing an increasingly important role in medicine, providing the individual patient with a customised diagnosis and treatment is envisaged as part of future precision medicine. Such customisation will become possible through the emergence of digital twin (DT) technology. The objective of this article is to review the progress of prominent research on DT technology in medicine and discuss the potential applications and future opportunities as well as several challenges remaining in digital healthcare. A review of the literature was conducted using PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus and related bibliographic resources, in which the following terms and their derivatives were considered during the search: DT, medicine and digital health virtual healthcare. Finally, analyses of the literature yielded 465 pertinent articles, of which we selected 22 for detailed review. We summarised the application examples of DT in medicine and analysed the applications in many fields of medicine. It revealed encouraging results that DT is being increasing applied in medicine. Results from this literature review indicated that DT healthcare, as a key fusion approach of future medicine, will bring the advantages of precision diagnose and personalised treatment into reality.

Keywords: Digital twin; healthcare; medicine; personalised treatment; precision diagnose.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Flow diagram illustrating the screening process for papers in this study.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Comparison of studies on digital twin technology conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and China in the past 20 years.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Application and prospects of digital twin technology in the medical field.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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