Digital twins for breast cancer treatment – an empirical study on stakeholders’ perspectives on potentials and challenges

Abstract Purpose With 2.3 million diagnoses and 685,000 deaths annually, breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. The provision of necessary information throughout the whole patient journey is key to minimize the risk of breast cancer, to detect breast cancer as early as possible, and to aid the treatment process. Digital solutions provide abilities to holistically collect, transfer, and sophisticatedly analyze information. Specifically, digital twins in healthcare, as dynamic replicas of human bodies, are promising approaches for monitoring the condition of their patients and predicting tumor developments based on biometric data. However, the acceptance and adoption of such digital twin solutions in healthcare heavily depend on the individual stakeholders of the treatment process. This study aims to identify potentials and challenges of the introduction of digital twins in breast cancer applications from the involved stakeholders’ perspectives. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 relevant stakeholders from the breast cancer treatment process. The interviews were then analyzed, based on the qualitative content analysis according to Mayring. Results The results show that stakeholders see great potential in digital twin solutions to further facilitate personalized medicine, efficiency increases, and scientific benefits. However, the sensitive nature of healthcare causes numerous potential challenges in the technical, regulatory, user interface, and the strategic domain. Conclusions The stakeholders unanimously agreed on the potential benefits of digital twins. However, existing systemic and individual stakeholder-level barriers hamper their introduction in breast cancer settings.