The CleverHealth Network ecosystem’s Afterwork event in September (25.9.2025) brought together a diverse group of experts to discuss the theme Digital Twins and Virtual Care Paths. The topic was explored in depth through expert presentations and an interactive panel discussion. The event was hosted by CGI.
The Afterwork sessions are internal events for the CHN ecosystem with the aim to share fresh insights, highlighth recent developments, introduce new project ideas, and foster discussion among ecosystem members on selected themes. This time, the goal was to specifically open up one of the CHN roadmap themes, “Digital Twins and Virtual Care Paths”, from various stakeholder perspectives.
Niraj Sood, Director for Finland, Poland, and the Baltics at CGI delivered the host company’s welcome. In his opening remarks, he emphasized that collaboration with partners, including competitors and working within ecosystems are key success factors in today’s world. CGI is a major player in Finland, with around 3,700 employees across 11 locations, and is actively involved in solving healthcare challenges through digitalization.
Before diving into the day’s theme, Pekka Kahri from HUS shared updates from the European University Hospital Alliance (EUHA) innovation network, where he represents HUS. International collaboration is a core part of the CHN ecosystem, and EUHA—comprising 11 leading university hospitals—provides an important channel for this. Its purpose includes sharing best practices and promoting innovation cooperation among Europe’s top hospitals and their partner networks.
What are Digital Twins and what do they enable?
Sirpa Arvonen, Director of eHealth Services at HUS, presented the potential of digital twins from HUS’s perspective. She divided the theme into three parts:
- A digital patient is a dynamic, data-driven virtual representation of an individual patient, organ function, or biological system, enabling e.g. personalized precision treatment.
- In hospital production and process management (“Hospital as a factory”), a digital twin supports strategic and operational planning—optimizing operations, patient flows, staffing, and the use of facilities and equipment in real time.
- At the system level, it integrates clinical and non-clinical processes into a single real-time management view.
Miika Leminen and Taina Kolehmainen from CGI introduced a new dimension in their presentation titled “The Era of Digital Triplets.” A digital triplet refers to artificial intelligence that flexibly connects digital twins across different areas of the service system to best meet customer needs. AI uses advanced analytics and predictive models to generate statistically grounded suggestions for given challenges. The concept is simple: since using a digital twin often requires specialized expertise, AI creates a utilization layer (e.g., assistant or agent-based) that delivers just the right information from the digital twin to the healthcare professional at the right moment to support decision-making in everyday situations.
Miika Koskinen from HUS explored the research perspective and future possibilities of digital twins. He reminded the audience that digital twins are models of reality, and this kind of modeling has been made already long time. A medical digital twin is a dynamic virtual model containing real-time and historical data on physiological or pathological processes, aiding in disease monitoring, prediction, and treatment optimization. Research applications include modeling of organs (e.g., heart, lungs, kidneys), diseases (e.g., cancer, cardiology, neurology, orthopedics), system-level processes (e.g., immune system), drug development, clinical trials, and hospital process planning. Based on his own research, he emphasized that tailoring treatments to individual characteristics requires an understanding and model of population heterogeneity.
Panel Discussion and Networking
The presentations sparked great interest and were further explored in an interactive panel discussion, with active audience participation. Panelists included Nyrki Rantonen and Miika Koskinen from HUS, Taina Kolehmainen and Miika Leminen from CGI, and moderator Markku Heino from Spinverse. The discussion continued during the networking session, which also featured CGI demos related to the topic.
The event successfully fostered a shared understanding of the opportunities and challenges of digital twins in healthcare. This provides a solid foundation for planning and launching new, concrete, need-driven development projects.
