Applications of Digital Twin Technology in the Medical and Health Field and Ethical, Legal and Social Issues (ELSI)

Abstract

Digital twin technology, which constructs a twin of the real world in a digital space based on information collected in the real world, is attracting attention. This technology is used to perform analyses and simulations that are difficult to perform in the real world on a twin constructed in a digital space and feed the results back to the real world. In recent years, research has also been conducted on its application in the medical and health fields, and policy discussions for its introduction are beginning to take place in Japan as well. However, digital twins, which contain a lot of information on personal health, require careful handling from the perspective of privacy and security. In order to appropriately promote applications in the medical and health fields, we believe that these ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) should also be discussed; however, at present, the research trends themselves in these fields are not well understood and the issues are not well organized. Therefore, in this study, we reviewed the literature on the potential applications of digital twin technology in the medical and health fields to gain an understanding of the current research trends. We also extracted ELSIs that have been pointed out at this point in time, and aimed to organize issues for future social implementation.

The literature search yielded 88 references on the application of digital twin in individual areas of medicine and health, and 14 references on the main theme of ELSI. Few of the applications to the medical and health fields had reached the practical stage. Also, although several issues were raised in the discussion on ELSI, there was little discussion on specific solutions, and the discussion was limited to the presentation of topics. In the future, more in-depth discussions are required in line with actual research trends and the level of social implementation.