Digital Twins in Healthcare for Citizens

Abstract

Digital twins are gaining attention in healthcare, especially in fields like hospital management, simulating surgeries, or providing personalized health. As digital replicas based on users' data, digital twins can inform citizens in-depth about their lifestyle, medical data, and biomedical data. Hence, there is the assumption that digital twins could facilitate preventative healthcare at home, bringing healthcare closer to citizens, yet there are underexamined ethical concerns. In this paper, we explore the ethics of digital twins based on citizens' perspectives on digital twins in healthcare via recent literature and research. Although digital twins have great potential, citizens have concerns about surveillance, data ownership, data accuracy, and personal and collective agency.