Digital twin in healthcare facilities: Linking real-time air quality data to BIM

In this paper, the authors provide an overview of what are Digital Twins (DT), why DTs provide advantages to facility management (FM) practices and how can a DT be implemented. Focusing on healthcare facilities, the paper defines how a DT implementation can support two broad areas in healthcare: facility maintenance and space management. A case study of an operating room (OR) is used to illustrate the implementation of a DT prototype. Realtime sensor data is linked to an OR BIM using Azure cloud services and Microsoft Power BI. An example dashboard is created in Power BI to demonstrate various visualization tools of Power BI and its interaction with live sensor data. The authors also reflect on how the system architecture proposed in this paper can reduce the complexity of creating a DT and how standardization in DT creation can support the scalability of the discussed DT prototype.