In the famous and much loved Christopher Nolan movie, Interstellar, the space shuttle crew faced multiple problems on their quest to find another inhabitable planet. Say, in a situation like this, was there a replica of their space craft on the Earth; the engineers here could find solution to their problems with the materials available in the replica, and hence the original shuttle, and communicate these to make things easier. Now say, instead of the physical replica, the engineers of the shuttle created a digital replica and could take care of various things on their own in real-time. Not just that, in the virtual twin of the spacecraft, they could already test various conditions the spacecraft would undergo, enabling them to improvise it for the better.
Well, this technology is no more just an imagination, it’s the reality. Called as ‘Digital Twin’, this technology is the thread that ties the digital world to the physical one. Creating the exact clone of the physical environment, device, or even a human body digitally, is today possible and it brings incredible benefits to the healthcare space.
With digital twin, the status of the existing as well as the new devices and instruments can be checked, they can be tested for various conditions virtually, and hence, the real life scenarios can be deduced from the results. This will save costs and reduce flaws. Moreover, now we can replicate the specific cells from the human body and test them for new medications or analyze the results of the operation, before even conducting it. Digital twins bring us the easy, efficient, and safer ways to analyze, test, and check status of the healthcare procedures.
The world is moving fast, technologically, and with every shocking discovery we take a step towards betterment. Digital twins are the part of this process. The applications and benefits this technology brings to the healthcare sector are limitless. The future is here, and we ought to be ready for it!
