A Maturity Model for Digital Twins in Healthcare

Digital models, digital shadows, and digital twins (DTs) are increasingly used in manufacturing/Industry 4.0 to represent levels of integration between physical systems and their digital counterparts; data-flow mechanisms are the enablers of such integration. Healthcare operations management has also witnessed rising interest in hybrid models that use real-time data to increase situational awareness (SA) and enable short-term decision-making. In M&S literature, such models are referred to as Real-time Simulations (RtS) and DTs. Healthcare organizations can realize a heightened state of SA by transitioning from conventional modeling to RtS/DTs. The paper presents a Maturity Model for DTs to contextualize the increasing levels of healthcare Information Systems/Information Technology (IS/IT) integration with real-time models that such a shift will necessitate. The higher the Maturity Level of IS/IT integration, the greater the opportunity to develop modeling artifacts that realize the potential of real-time data and enable organizations to attain higher levels of SA.