The Role of Digital Twins for improving Sustainability in Healthcare: The IRST Case

This thesis derives from the internship experience carried out at IRST in 2023, within a period in which the institute will profoundly evolve and where the complexity already present in current activities will further increase. From a condition in which the Pharmacy department produces therapies for 3 centres, the number of users to be supplied will triple through the Comprehensive Cancer Care and Research Network (CCCRN) project in collaboration with AUSL Romagna. Given the need to manage new and more complex processes, together with IRST's commitment to becoming more sustainable, the project in question has matured: improving decision-making processes in a sustainable perspective through data. To this end, this thesis aims to demonstrate the validity of a Digital Twin (DT) approach. That has been used to drive the work of analysis of the therapy production process, examined as the focus of IRST's activities and of the new project with AUSL, defining the key information to be captured and providing a starting point for developing further studies aimed at extracting this information. In parallel, a proposal for a model of Digital Twins (based on the Web of Digital Twins concept) and an example demonstrating the value of the analysis phase is provided. To achieve this objective, the internship activities focused on engaging in dialogue with domain experts as a point of reference for a description of the reality in its essential features for addressing certain needs. While the thesis will proceed with an in-depth examination of sustainability in the healthcare sector and the value provided by the Digital Twin, demonstrating whether this approach is strategic with IRST's challenges.