A Digital Twin Navigation System for Hospital Supply Rooms: 3D Spatial Guidance Tool

Hospital supply rooms are dense, vertically complex environments where clinicians may lose time locating items. Existing text-based inventory logs require mental translation from alphanumeric codes to physical space, adding cognitive load during time-sensitive tasks. Despite growing use of digital twins in health care, this technology has been underreported in supply room navigation.

The objective of this study is to describe the design and feasibility of a browser-based three-dimensional (3D) digital twin system providing spatial guidance for locating supplies in a hospital clean supply room.

A digital twin, defined here as a virtual interactive replica of a physical environment, was developed using React and Three.js to model a telemetry unit clean supply room. The system renders more than 100 storage bins using instanced rendering. Users search via a text interface; the system highlights the target bin and animates the camera to its position.

The prototype achieved sub-10-ms search response times and loaded in under 1 second on standard hospital hardware. Two coresidents completed informal prototype walkthroughs over a 2-week period; these observations were anecdotal and were not part of a formal usability study.

A 3D digital twin approach to supply room navigation is technically feasible using open-source web technologies at zero licensing cost and addresses spatial cognition challenges in dense health care storage environments. Formal usability evaluation is needed to quantify clinical effects.