Pervasive Computing Integrated Discrete Event Simulation for a Hospital Digital Twin

A hospital is an ecosystem that includes real-time services that require high human interaction on both resources level (doctor, nurses, etc.) and entities level (patients). Designing, planning, improving and controlling this system can be very challenging due to the system complexity governed by several subjective factors that affect the hospital interrelated functions or services. However, continuously changing health care needs that consistently face hospitals require them to keep continuously improving the efficiency of these services as demand increases and as new services are added. This paper proposes a new methodology that uses the concept of Digital Twin (DT) of hospital services based on Discrete Event Simulation (DES) integrated with health care information systems and Internet of things (IoT) devices. It develops a predictive decision support model that employs real-time services data drawn from these systems and devices. This model enables assessing the efficiency of existing health care delivery systems and evaluating the impact of changes in services without disrupting daily activities of the hospital. The developed model, a digital twin (or a virtual replica of the hospital), simulates a number of key hospital health delivery services, based on relevant data retrieved in real-time. Although the model simulates four key services, initially as a proof of concept, but it proposes a general framework, which can be expanded to include other services. The demonstrated proof-of-concept shows that it achieves better planning and improvement of usage of resources, and thus enabling both practitioners and management to examine any model changes to foresee the effectiveness or efficiency of services before they are applied in reality.