Exploring the Role of Digital Twins in Heart Care: Research Directions and Applications.

The concept of digital twins has emerged as a transformative innovation in healthcare. Digital twins are virtual replicas of physical entities that can be updated with real-time data allowing for simulation analysis and optimization. Their application in healthcare can potentially improve patient care, medical research, and healthcare management. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in research on digital twins, particularly since 2019, there has been an explosive surge in research, driven by rapid advancements in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and healthcare technologies. Great efforts have been put into defining frameworks and developing applications and outcome-oriented research. There are also promising industrial applications illustrating the feasibility of replicating heart functioning. Intensive research growth is noticeable in academia and clinical research and to some extent within the industry. The results of the literature review done in this study reveal a significant body of academic research and a limited number of industrial applications within the field of heart disease. Understanding of the concept is still evolving, shaped by diverse applications, research objectives, and multidisciplinary collaborations in which digital twins are formulated. Harmonizing definitions and understanding digital twins is essential for ensuring methodological advancement of the concept and fostering multi-disciplinary collaboration leading to reliable and impactful outcomes in research and in practice.