ArticleLife sciences, society and policy2021
The use of digital twins in healthcare: socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks.
Article in Life sciences, society and policy, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 57 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
57 citing papers in PubMed.
- Synthetic control methods for n-of-1 and parallel-group trials in Alzheimer's disease: A proof-of-concept study using the I-CONECT.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Trial
- A data-driven digital twin of emergency department flow to quantify congestion dynamics and test operational resilience.Internal and emergency medicine · 2026Article
- Digital Twins for Targeted Therapy in Head and Neck Cancer: From Molecular Stratification to Resistance-Aware Combination Strategies.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2026Review
- The Digital Transformation of Rehabilitation Medicine: A Narrative Review of Artificial Intelligence Innovations, Clinical Integration, and Future Paradigms.Journal of evaluation in clinical practice · 2026Review
- Future-Making From Afar: Digital Twins in Medicine.Sociology of health & illness · 2026Article
- Digital twins and digital models of the human circulatory system.Nature reviews bioengineering · 2026Article
- Digital health technologies in medicine: evidence, artificial intelligence integration, and ethical challenges.Infectious agents and cancer · 2026Review
- Design for a digital twin in clinical patient care.npj health systems · 2026Review
- Exploring Professionals' Perceptions of the Potential of Digital Twins in Homecare-A Focus Group Study in Sweden.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Digital twins and systemic acceleration: insights from Luhmann's sociological perspective.Frontiers in sociology · 2026Article
- Realising the digital twin: a thematic review and analysis of the ethical, legal, and social issues for digital twins in healthcare.AI & society · 2026Article
- A survey on ethical digital twins in healthcare.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2026Review
- Article
- Integrated Patient Digital and Biomimetic Twins for Precision Medicine: A Perspective.Seminars in liver disease · 2025Review
- The ethical aspects of human organ-on-chip models: A mapping review.Stem cell reports · 2025Review
- Enhancing randomized clinical trials with digital twins.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2025Review
- Ethical and social considerations of applying artificial intelligence in healthcare-a two-pronged scoping review.BMC medical ethics · 2025Article
- Computational Nuclear Oncology Toward Precision Radiopharmaceutical Therapies: Ethical, Regulatory, and Socioeconomic Dimensions of Theranostic Digital Twins.Journal of nuclear medicine : official publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine · 2025Article
- Digital Representation of Patients as Medical Digital Twins: Data-Centric Viewpoint.JMIR medical informatics · 2025Article
- TWINVAX: conceptual model of a digital twin for immunisation services in primary health care.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Anticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation. One such emergent technology is the digital twin which we define here as a living replica of a physical system (human or non-human). A digital twin combines various emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data and robotics, each component bringing its own socio-ethical issues to the resulting artefacts. The question thus arises which of these socio-ethical themes surface in the process and how they are perceived by stakeholders in the field. In this report we present the results of a qualitative study into the socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks of using digital twins in healthcare. Employing insights from ethics of technology and the Quadruple Helix theory of innovation, we conducted desk research of white literature and 23 interviews with representatives from the four helixes: industry, research, policy and civil society. The ethical scan revealed several important areas where the digital twin can produce socio-ethical value (e.g., prevention and treatment of disease, cost reduction, patient autonomy and freedom, equal treatment) but also several important areas of socio-ethical risks (e.g., privacy and property of data, disruption of existing societal structures, inequality and injustice). We conclude with a reflection on the employed analytical tool and suggestions for further research.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.