Digital Twin Conceptualization for Primary Healthcare: A Co-Design, Co-Development, and Co-Implementation Approach
Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: High users (HUs) of primary care services represent a small share of patients but account for a disproportionate share of utilization, often with complex clinical, social, and organizational needs. This paper presents the conceptualization, co-development, and early implementation planning of a digital twin (DT) framework for HU management in primary care, structured in three phases: co-design phase with family doctors, administrators, and patients using Participatory Action Research; co-development phase combining process mining, predictive modelling, and clustering on longitudinal primary care and hospital data; and co-implementation guided by implementation science frameworks. Preliminary findings show that high utilization is shaped by clinical, social, and systemic factors, and that stakeholders value risk prediction, patient profiling, and intervention simulation, provided the DT stays simple and workflow-integrated. Initial analytical results support the feasibility of combining process mining, supervised learning, and patient profiling within a DT framework.
Source: IEEE Smart World Congress (SWC)
Institutions: Value for Health CoLAB, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Language: English
Subfield: Health Informatics
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7225620124