The Potential of Digital Twins in Healthcare: Evaluation of a Clinical Decision Support System for Chronic Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Digital twin technology is revolutionizing healthcare systems by leveraging real-time data integration, advanced analytics, and virtual simulations to improve patient care, enable predictive analytics, optimize clinical operations, and ease training and simulation [1]. In the research project MED2ICIN, a digital twin for chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) has been developed which consists of a decision support system for the clinician (CDSS) on the one hand and a patient app for improved data sovereignty and patient involvement on the other hand. The aim of the quantitative study is to determine the potential value of the CDSS in terms of increasing benefits and reducing cost. We conduct an online survey with 31 gastroenterologists from different university clinics in Germany. After an initial introduction of the eHealth solution, we discuss the potential of the solution with regards to cost, time expenditure and quality of care. Our findings show that the MED2ICIN system has a significantly positive impact on all defined outcomes except for treatment adherence.