Digital Twin Hospital Buildings: An Exemplary Case Study through Continuous Lifecycle Integration

TLDR

Hospital buildings house complex facility, medical, and security systems, yet BIM struggles to provide real‑time updates for the large volumes of data generated. This study introduces a continuous lifecycle integration approach that combines Digital Twin technology with early contractor involvement, demonstrated in a large Chinese hospital. The approach integrates static and dynamic data from more than 20 management systems across design, construction, pre‑O&M, and O&M phases, and implements a DT software platform featuring real‑time visualization and AI diagnosis in a dedicated control center. Over a year of operation, the system enabled managers to monitor hospital status and receive automated diagnostic recommendations, while reducing energy consumption, preventing facility faults, cutting repair requests, and improving maintenance quality.

Abstract

Hospital buildings usually contain sophisticated facility systems and special medical equipment, strict security requirements, and business systems. Traditional methods such as BIM are becoming less capable of real‐time updates of building status and big data volume. By proposing innovations both in technique and management—a “continuous lifecycle integration” method based on the concept of Digital Twin (DT) and “early movement” of the general contractor, this paper reported a successful project case in a large hospital in China. The case realized continuous, scheduled integration of static data and dynamic data of more than 20 management systems from the design, construction, pre‐O&M phase up to the O&M phase. Then, a DT software system with real‐time visual management and artificial intelligent diagnosis modules was developed and deployed in a newly built DT control center. Managers have the ability to grasp the detailed status of the whole hospital by visual management and receive timely facility diagnosis and operation suggestions that are automatically sent back from the digital building to reality. The case has been steadily running for more than a year in the hospital and achieved desired performance by reducing energy consumption, avoiding facility faults, reducing the number of requested repairs, and enhancing the quality of daily maintenance work.