Digital Twin of COVID-19 Mass Vaccination Centers

Abstract

The problem is the vaccination of a large number of people in a short time period, using minimum space and resources. The tradeoff is that this minimum number of resources must guarantee a good service for the patients, represented by the time spent in the system and in the queue. The goal is to develop a digital twin which integrates the physical and virtual systems and allows a real-time mapping of the patient flow to create a sustainable and dynamic vaccination center. Firstly, to reach this goal, a discrete-event simulation model is implemented. The simulation model is integrated with a mobile application that automatically collects time measures. By processing these measures, indicators can be computed to find problems, run the virtual model to solve them, and replicate improvements in the real system. The model is tested in a South Tyrol vaccination clinic and the best configuration found includes 31 operators and 306 places dedicated for the queues. This configuration allows the vaccination of 2164 patients in a 10-h shift, with a mean process time of 25 min. Data from the APP are managed to build the dashboard with indicators like number of people in queue for each phase and resource utilization.

Digital twin in healthcare: Recent updates and challenges

“…During the pandemic, it has been necessary to find a way to vaccinate more people in a shorter time period, especially when healthcare workers are scarce. Pilati et al 39 developed a DT system for the vaccination process and tested it in a clinic. The system allows a real-time simulation of patients and creates a dynamic vaccination centre.…”

Using simulation modelling and systems science to help contain COVID‐19: A systematic review

“…The simulation models were mainly used to assess the impact of COVID‐19 on an organization's workflow and emphasized its optimization (Allen, Bhanji, et al, 2020 ; Das, 2020 ; de Brito Jr et al, 2021 ; Kim et al, 2021 ; VanDeusen et al, 2021 ; Zeinalnezhad et al, 2020 ). Meanwhile, DES was also applied to process analysis and optimization of service facilities that had effects on COVID‐19 spread, including testing facility (Çaglayan et al, 2022 ; El Hage et al, 2021 ; Gowda et al, 2021 ; Saidani et al, 2021 ; Saidani & Kim, 2021 ), vaccination centres (Pilati et al, 2021 ) and COVID‐19‐related hospitals (Frichi et al, 2021 ; Melman et al, 2021 ). DES research was also used to investigate different interventions for minimizing transmission risk in lab facilities (Lim et al, 2020 ).…”

Discrete-event simulation study of a COVID-19 mass vaccination centre

“…Considering the Italian legislation, defined at national [20] , [21] and regional level [22] , the regular performance of the anti-COVID-19 immunisation process consists of five activities: reception and administrative acceptance, medical assessment, waiting, vaccination and monitoring. Nevertheless, the lack of specific indications in the guidelines led to a certain grade of variation at the local level, thus providing additional evidence on new MVC organisational models [23] , [24] , [25] . For instance, the vaccination-islands model [23] redesigned the conventional MVC layout and brought medical assessment workstations and inoculation workstations close to decrease patient travelling between the two separate activities, rationalising timings.…”