As the healthcare industry grapples with surging demand and mounting pressure to do more with limited resources, one question is becoming impossible to ignore: How can healthcare organizations improve patient care without disrupting day-to-day operations?
Every decision—from redesigning a department to adjusting staffing levels or reconfiguring patient workflows—can affect operational efficiency, costs, and, most importantly, patient outcomes. But what if, instead of relying on trial and error, healthcare organizations could leverage advanced technologies to evaluate changes before they’re implemented?
During a recent webinar entitled, “Improve Healthcare Design and Performance Through Simulation and Digital Twins,” Matt Hodson, Simulation Lead at IMAGINiT Technologies, and other technology experts explored how healthcare organizations are using simulation and digital twins to better plan facilities, optimize operations, and prepare for growing demands.
Why healthcare needs a new approach to planning
The pressures facing healthcare organizations today have been building for years, but recent changes have significantly intensified the challenge. As Hodson notes, one of these catalysts is the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act.
Signed into law in 2022, the legislation expanded healthcare eligibility for veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances, dramatically increasing demand across the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system.
“The PACT Act alone has shown to increase veteran healthcare enrollment by 37 [percent],” Hodson explained, noting that the surge in demand is forcing healthcare organizations to continuously adapt while balancing patient care with long-term planning.
That increase comes as providers already navigate aging infrastructure and workforce shortages, making it increasingly difficult to invest in modernization while meeting today’s patient needs. Hodson noted that the healthcare industry is currently managing approximately $390 billion in deferred maintenance across its facilities, because organizations are often forced to prioritize immediate patient care over long-term capital improvements and expansion efforts.
Rather than making changes in a live healthcare setting, leaders can evaluate different operational scenarios in a virtual environment to understand how decisions may affect patient flow, resource utilization, and overall performance.
“There’s a lot of issues that are being caused by all of those converging shifts,” Hodson said. “It continues to get worse as staffing shortages increase.”
These effects extend well beyond facility management. As demand continues to grow, healthcare organizations are seeing longer patient stays, higher bed utilization, and more patients leaving emergency departments before receiving care. As Hodson later explained, some emergency departments now report more than five percent of patients leaving without being seen.
For healthcare leaders, these converging pressures underscore the need for better planning tools that can help organizations evaluate operational changes, improve efficiency, and make informed decisions before investing valuable time and resources.
How simulation improves healthcare planning
Healthcare organizations can’t afford to rely on trial and error when responding to rising patient demand, staffing shortages, aging infrastructure, and limited resources. To address these challenges, Hodson explained how simulation and digital twins enable healthcare leaders to evaluate operational changes before implementation, providing greater visibility into healthcare operations and supporting more informed planning decisions.
One of the technologies highlighted during the webinar was FlexSim, a discrete event simulation platform. “The value of FlexSim is that it was designed for healthcare people by healthcare people,” Hodson explained. “It was a partnership with the healthcare industry and FlexSim to co-develop this capability that’s easy for people to use and accounts for the complexity and intricacy of the healthcare industry.”
Using simulation, organizations can build virtual representations of hospitals, emergency departments, clinics, and other healthcare environments. Hodson noted that organizations can integrate the design software they’re already using—including Autodesk Revit, AutoCAD, and SolidWorks—before adding locations, equipment, staffing, and operational constraints to create a simulation model that reflects their facility’s unique processes
While simulation helps organizations prepare for future scenarios, digital twins extend that capability by providing a live, real-time view of healthcare operations.
Rather than making changes in a live healthcare setting, leaders can evaluate different operational scenarios in a virtual environment to understand how decisions may affect patient flow, resource utilization, and overall performance.
“It allows you to create different ‘what-if’ scenarios so you can quantify the impact of changes,” Hodson said. Simulation also allows organizations to account for the operational constraints that often contribute to delays in patient care.
“If you don’t have enough beds, people are waiting. If nurses aren’t available at the right time, people are waiting,” Hodson explained. “That constrained system is a critical element to understand the performance and the impact.”
From simulation to real-time digital twins
While simulation helps organizations prepare for future scenarios, digital twins extend that capability by providing a live, real-time view of healthcare operations – enabling a more dynamic, continuously updated approach to decision-making.
“What we’re talking about today is simulation modeling, which is not connected to any system,” he explained. “A digital twin, on the other hand, is a live status or real-time feed of the system and all of the assets.”
By combining the two, healthcare organizations can create what Hodson described as a simulation-based digital twin, giving leaders the ability to monitor current operations while also predicting how future demand may affect patient care and hospital performance.
As healthcare organizations continue to navigate growing demand and operational complexity, simulation and digital twins offer a practical way to evaluate decisions before implementation.
“You take your digital twin, and then we apply simulation capability to it. That way, it can be used as a predictive tool… based on where I am [and] where am I going to be in the next 1, 4, 8, or 24 hours.”
Beyond forecasting future demand, Hodson explained that simulation-based digital twins can also recommend actions to help healthcare organizations respond before operational issues begin affecting patients.
“If it sees that your metrics are getting out of control… it can recommend what you could do to get census down,” he said. “It could be evaluating certain discharges, having overtime, or calling in additional staff.”
As healthcare organizations continue to navigate growing demand and operational complexity, simulation and digital twins offer a practical way to evaluate decisions before implementation. By enabling more proactive planning and data-driven decision-making, these technologies can help providers improve efficiency while better preparing for future challenges.
