Stakeholder Perspectives on Digital Twin Implementation Challenges in Healthcare: Insights from a Provider Digital Twin Case Study

TL;DR

This study explores the diverse challenges faced by different healthcare stakeholders in implementing digital twin technology, emphasizing the need for tailored, multidisciplinary strategies to facilitate successful adoption.

Contribution

It provides a detailed stakeholder perspective analysis on digital twin implementation challenges in healthcare using a comprehensive case study and thematic coding.

Findings

Shared concerns include data privacy, security, and regulatory compliance.

Diverging stakeholder perspectives highlight specific functional and practical barriers.

66 challenges categorized into seven key domains.

Abstract

Digital twin (DT) technology holds immense potential for transforming healthcare systems through real-time monitoring, predictive analysis, and agile interventions to support various decision-making needs. However, its successful implementation depends on addressing a range of complex sociotechnical challenges. Using a case study of provider workload DT, this research investigates DT implementation challenges in healthcare by capturing the perspectives of four distinct stakeholders: family medicine specialists (FMS), organizational psychologists (OP), engineers (EE), and implementation scientists (IS). We conducted semi-structured interviews guided by the updated Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR 2.0), a widely used implementation science framework for understanding factors that influence implementation outcomes. We then mapped each stakeholder group's preferences and concerns, revealing a nuanced landscape of converging and diverging perspectives that highlight both shared and group-specific implementation barriers. Through thematic coding, the 66 identified challenges were categorized into seven domains: data-related, financial and economic, operational, organizational, personnel, regulatory and ethical, and technological. Our findings reveal shared concerns such as data privacy and security, interoperability, and regulatory compliance. However, divergences also emerged, reflecting each group's functional focus. These findings emphasize the need for a multidisciplinary, stakeholder-sensitive approach that addresses both functional and practical concerns, highlighting the importance of tailored implementation strategies to support successful DT adoption in healthcare.