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The use of digital twins (DTs) has proliferated across various fields and industries, with a recent surge in the healthcare sector. The concept of digital twin for health (DT4H) holds great promise to revolutionize the entire healthcare system, including management and delivery, disease treatment and prevention, and health well-being maintenance, ultimately improving human life. The rapid growth of big data and continuous advancement in data science (DS) and artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to significantly expedite DT research and development by providing scientific expertise, essential data, and robust cybertechnology infrastructure. Although various DT initiatives have been underway in the industry, government, and military, DT4H is still in its early stages. This paper presents an overview of the current applications of DTs in healthcare, examines consortium research centers and their limitations, and surveys the current landscape of emerging research and development opportunities in healthcare. We envision the emergence of a collaborative global effort among stakeholders to enhance healthcare and improve the quality of life for millions of individuals worldwide through pioneering research and development in the realm of DT technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to highlight how to reduce medication errors through the implementation of human factors science to the design features of medication containers. Despite efforts to employ automation for increased safety and decreased workload, medication administration in hospital wards is still heavily dependent on human operators (pharmacists, nurses, physicians, etc.). Improving this multi-step process requires its being studied and designed as an interface in a complex socio-technical system. Human factors engineering, also known as ergonomics, involves designing socio-technical systems to improve overall system performance, and reduces the risk of system, and in particular, operator, failures. The incorporation of human factors principles into the design of the work environment and tools that are in use during medication administration could improve this process. During periods of high workload, the cognitive effort necessary to work through a very demanding process may overwhelm even expert operators. In such conditions, the entire system should facilitate the human operator's high level of performance. Regarding medications, clinicians should be provided with as many perceptual cues as possible to facilitate medication identification. Neglecting the shape of the container as one of the features that differentiates between classes of medications is a lost opportunity to use a helpful characteristic, and medication administration failures that happen in the absence of such intentional design arise from "designer error" rather than "user error". Guidelines that define a container's shape for each class of medication would compel pharmaceutical manufacturers to be compatible and would eliminate the confusion that arises when a hospital changes the supplier of a given medication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]