Digital Twin-Based Virtual Hospital Platform for IT Outage Disaster Response Training: Implementation and Evaluation...

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Healthcare Simulation
• Information Technology in Medicine

Background:

• Hospital information technology (IT) outages disrupt clinical workflows and patient safety.
• Traditional disaster response training is resource-intensive and limits operational continuity.
• Digital twin technology offers a solution for realistic, repeatable virtual training.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and implement a digital twin-based virtual hospital for IT outage disaster response training.
• To evaluate the platform's feasibility using performance metrics and participant feedback.

Main Methods:

• A digital twin modeled a hospital with 317 clinical spaces and 6 entrances.
• Simulated a Level 1 IT outage (Code White) with 7 patient cases.
• 60 multidisciplinary staff participated in the virtual training, with performance evaluated on completion rates, accuracy, and readiness scores.

Main Results:

• 100% scenario completion rates and perfect accuracy in billing and prescription entry.
• Overall operational readiness score of 80%, with 90% for the emergency prescription program.
• Training reduced resource consumption by 70 minutes and full-time equivalent requirements by 46% compared to conventional methods.

Conclusions:

• A simulation-oriented digital twin platform can effectively support multi-department IT disaster response training.
• The study identified technical gaps in user permissions and prescription classification for future development.
• This approach provides a feasible and efficient alternative to traditional disaster response training.