Human Digital Twin for Personalized Healthcare: Vision, Architecture and Future Directions

Human digital twin (HDT) is an emerging technology that can revolutionize the existing healthcare system with the ability to enable personalized healthcare services (PHS) using various tools such as artificial intelligence and blockchain. Its implementation is expected to be similar to digital twins proposed in other application areas such as manufacturing and aviation by consisting of three key dimensions: the physical entity, virtual model, and connection that characterizes the physical-virtual interactions. The known complexity of human body structure because of the constant molecular and physiological changes, however, means extracting precise medical data as well as modeling of HDT is very difficult. Hence, HDT is much more complex than its counterparts and its implementation methods remain unclear, which deserves further investigation. This article thus presents the architectural framework and key design requirements of HDT and then discusses the key technologies and technical challenges to suggest future directions. We believe that this article will open up new research opportunities and motivate new research efforts towards the development of HDT for PHS.