Putting Digital Twin to Work for the Humans

I did a couple of posts earlier including one from the last week on Digital Twins applied to various domains including for Human Health & Wellness:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/shyamvaran_digitaltwin-activity-6676502284299571200-E-DE

In this post let us look at a practical use of Digital Twin for Humans. The goal will be to produce the following:

·      Digital Twin of an average person (with certain demographics) based on normal / expected levels

·      Baseline Digital Twin instance, of a specific individual, based on their own normal levels

·      Point-in-time Digital Twin, based on various measure activity levels via the sensors.

This could be a series of snapshots / Digital Twin states for the instance for an individual. Let us focus on this problem statement: “Which exercise regimen will result in highest weight loss based on your body type?”

This is a very common wellness problem that one may be interested in. To maximize the impact of exercise, one needs to collect the sensor data such as:

·      Heart rate during resting and exercise

·      Oxygen saturation level

·      Minutes of exercise at fat burning, cardio and peak level

·      Horizontal steps and vertical steps in a day

·      Hours of sleep

·      pH level (sweat analysis)

In addition, the food (calories) and water intake, along with body weight is important data, in this context. Let us see which of these measurements are possible and the importance of each. The measurement of oxygen saturation I based on % of hemoglobin I blood that is saturated wit oxygen at time of reading and uses infra-red rays. The expected values are in range of 97 to 99% for healthy individuals. The pulse oximeter readings can be used to make adjustments in the exercises, in near realtime to allow for more equalized oxygen flow during the full duration of the workout. Overtime, one can learn the right regimen for exercise, with the target objectives, such as building strength or weight loss. Likewise, the pH level of blood can be measure via the sweat. With exercise, the body’s metabolism exceeds the oxygen supply and leads to alternate biochemical processes that do not require oxygen but produces lactic acid, entering the blood stream. If pH falls below 7.4, then causes acidosis, which can have serious impacts. If the pH drop below 6.8 or rise above 7.8, then death can occur, luckily human body has buffers to resist large changes in pH in the blood.

Sweat analysis can be valuable here and wearable textile-based sensors can be useful here. The fabric can use a pH sensitive dye, to measure the sweat pH. Such sensors can be integrated into a wearable waistband. This can be controlled by a central unit with wireless connectivity. Such measurement of pH can be useful for both sports’ performance and in medical conditions. Screen printing can be used for electro-conductive textile, which can last even after 20 washing cycles.

Ability to measure such physiological activity levels, to create the baseline Human Digital Twin and the deviations from it, during exercise or sports activity, can be used to apply the energy balance model and explain any observed difference between actual weight change and predicted weight loss or likewise, for predicting the strength levels due to the activity and exercises.

Would like to get your thoughts on this article? Thanks

In the next week's post, we will look at the commercial offerings available today for building and deploying Digital Twins. Here are a few offerings which are geared towards physical assets:

1)     Oracle IoT Digital Twin Framework https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/iot-cloud/iotgs/iot-digital-twin-framework.html

2)     Azure Digital Twin https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/digital-twins/

3)     IBM Digital Twin Exchange https://www.ibm.com/internet-of-things/trending/digital-twin / https://digitaltwinexchange.ibm.com/

4)     ANSYS Twin Builder https://www.ansys.com/products/systems/ansys-twin-builder

5)     GE’s Predix Platform https://www.ge.com/digital/applications/digital-twin etc.