A Smart Healthcare Supply Chain Information Visualisation

Platform Based on Digital Twin Technology

Nan Sheng and Qi Chen

Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou 510006, Guangdong, China

Keywords: Digital Twin Technology, Smart Healthcare, Supply Chain Information, Visualisation Platform.

Abstract: By building a unified purchase order-driven information visualisation platform for the smart healthcare supply

chain, it can effectively break down information silos and maximise the benefits of each node in the supply

chain. The objective of this paper is to study the design of a smart healthcare supply chain information

visualisation platform based on digital twin technology. The objectives of supply chain information flow

management are studied, different system functional modules are divided through business analysis, a virtual

warehouse modelling method based on digital twin is designed, and the composition of inventory information

management sub-module based on digital twin is studied to realise the visual control of the virtual warehouse.

Performance tests were conducted on the interface of the smart medical supply chain information visualisation

platform, and the experimental results showed that the platform has usability and stability.

1 INTRODUCTION

With the continuous reform of China's medical

system and the vigorous development of the socialist

market economy, the government requires enterprises

to provide drug supervision departments with full

monitoring and traceability of drugs from purchase to

supply and to final acceptance and use, and to strictly

monitor price changes in the drug distribution chain

to achieve openness in the purchase of medical drugs.

To ensure the safety and quality of medicines, and to

prevent the price of medicines from being increased

at multiple levels in the process of distribution,

resulting in inflated prices and ultimately increasing

the cost of treatment for people (Kiran, 2022; Yousef,

2020). To improve the overall level of service in the

national healthcare sector and to ensure the quality of

medical drugs through monitoring (Chaithanya,

2019).

In order to improve the management of medicines

and to increase the efficiency of their distribution,

Diéssica Oliveira-Dias has optimised the processes of

procurement, logistics and medicines management

according to modern logistics theory. As a sub-system

of the HIS, a new software for the pharmaceutical

Corresponding author

supply logistics system has also been developed.

Seven measures were taken in the area of healthcare

supply chain management and the initial

establishment of an in-hospital logistics system. All

these measures have produced very satisfactory

results. Based on a high level of HIS, optimising the

medical supply chain process and building an in-

hospital logistics system can improve the

management of medicines (Diéssica, 2022). Other

scholars have analyzed the negative impact of the

traditional "zero inventory" management model of

high-value medical consumables on medical quality

and medical safety, introduced the measures taken by

Fu Wai Hospital to strengthen the supply chain

management of high-value medical consumables in

order to ensure medical quality and medical safety,

and discussed the prospects of supply chain

management of high-value medical consumables (T.

S. Deepu, 2022). Ryan Atkins further elaborated on

the digital twin concept of health and medical

software product information management in relation

to regulatory requirements, FDA and EU Unique

Device Identification (UDI) systems, and software

product lifecycle management. In addition to

illustrating the digital twin concept, we present the

advantages and limitations of digital twin-based

592

Sheng, N. and Chen, Q.

A Smart Healthcare Supply Chain Information Visualisation Platform Based on Digital Twin Technology.

DOI: 10.5220/0012040200003620

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Economic Management and Model Engineering (ICEMME 2022), pages 592-598

ISBN: 978-989-758-636-1

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

approaches to health and medical software design and

development. The approach intentionally requires

better support for agile development techniques than

classical software development in this application

area (Ryan, 2022). Thus, it is necessary for hospitals

to implement a hospital supply chain management

system to manage and monitor procurement in a

uniform manner, both at the level of national policy

and from the hospital itself to improve

competitiveness and reduce costs.

The innovation of this thesis is to build the

platform architecture of digital twin technology based

on the smart medical supply chain information

visualization platform from the perspective of digital

twin technology application, systematically introduce

the relevant technology of the platform, and design

the inventory information management sub-module

based on the twin warehouse model based on digital

twin, and explore the relevant medical supply chain

business applications by combining the current

practical needs and development trend of smart

medical. It explores the business applications of the

medical supply chain, which will provide the

theoretical and technical basis for the application

development of medical supply chain information.

2 DESIGN OF A SMART

HEALTHCARE SUPPLY CHAIN

INFORMATION

VISUALIZATION PLATFORM

BASED ON DIGITAL TWIN

TECHNOLOGY

2.1 Objective of Supply Chain

Information Flow Management

Supply chain information flow management is to

integrate the information of each end enterprise in the

supply chain and establish a close and smooth

information flow network, so as to reflect the

traceability of products and improve the operational

efficiency of each link. In the pharmaceutical

industry, supply chain information flow management

is the integrated management of a system formed by

information on production, quality, inventory, market

demand, customer data, distribution and other

operational aspects (Cephas, 2022; Roman, 2022).

Supply chain inventory management is a

development of traditional inventory management,

linked and distinct from each other, with its own

characteristics (Pham, 2022). It requires

consideration of how to minimise the cost of

inventory rather than the total cost, how to co-

ordinate with other enterprises and do a good job of

cooperation rather than operating independently, and

the uncertainties of various aspects. To maximize the

benefits of each node of the supply chain (Michael,

2022).

2.2 Digital Twin

The digital twin consists of two kinds of digital

optimisation drives, one model-driven and one data-

driven, i.e. a digital model or enhanced data

constitutes a suitable solution to an industrial

application problem (Tal, 2021). The focus of digital

model simulation is different from that of traditional

model simulation, which is concerned with the

fidelity and reproducibility of the model, i.e. whether

it can accurately reproduce the properties and state of

the physical object. Digital model simulation, on the

other hand, is more concerned with the changing

relationships during the dynamic simulation process.

Data-driven simulation is the opposite. Data-driven

simulation in digital twin technology is more

concerned with the authenticity and accuracy of the

data in the simulation process, while the data

generated in the traditional simulation process is to a

certain extent for the reference of simulation

researchers only (Alok, 2021). In this paper, we use

the features of digital twin technology to replace the

physical entity with a virtual model to monitor the

inventory status of the warehouse more intuitively

through 3D modelling by collecting operational data

of the warehouse environment.

2.3 Virtual Warehouse Construction

Process

According to the characteristics of the real mapping

of the digital twin, the digital model of the server

room is the digital twin of the physical object of the

server room. This chapter uses Blender and three.js

together to model the way to design the virtual server

room model, server room modelling specific

implementation steps are as follows:

(1) Model building of the server room

The model is then edited, resized and rendered in

Blender software, while the texture maps of the

machine room equipment are collected and optimised

by PS. The optimised images are then applied to the

surface of the model and the real machine room

equipment model is rendered (Mustufa, 2021).

A Smart Healthcare Supply Chain Information Visualisation Platform Based on Digital Twin Technology

593

(2) Machine room scene layout

Export the server room model to three.js and add

physical effects to the model, such as collision

detection, friction, elasticity and other effects, to

make the model more in line with the real server

room. Layout the equipment in the machine room

under the same coordinate system to achieve

consistency between the layout of the machine room

3D scene and the actual machine room layout

(Hakim, 2021).

(3) Optimisation of scenes

Using scene loading optimization and model

rendering optimization means to accelerate the

rendering of scene models and improve the system

operation rate.

(4) Scene model visualisation

Display the server room scene model to the

browser interface through programming language. In

addition to the above equipment and scene

visualisation of the server room, the system should

also contain other visualisation information of the

server room, such as server room overview

visualisation, asset visualisation, motion loop

visualisation, alarm visualisation, etc. Such

visualisation information is displayed on the interface

in real time through the status kanban board (Sahar,

2021).

3 INVESTIGATION AND STUDY

OF A DIGITAL TWIN

TECHNOLOGY-BASED

INFORMATION

VISUALISATION PLATFORM

FOR THE SMART

HEALTHCARE SUPPLY CHAIN

3.1 System Architecture

The system is developed using the C/SClient/Server()

architecture model, the main components of which

are the client and the server. When going to the

production site to deploy the system, not only do you

need to install the database on the server, you also

need to deploy the system services, after which you

need to install the client on the client machine. This

architecture model has two main advantages: firstly,

it runs faster and with less lag, and secondly, it makes

full use of client machine resources. The architecture

of a digital twin-based rapid response manufacturing

system can be divided into four main parts: the user

interaction layer, the system functionality layer, the

object layer and the support layer.

(1) User interaction layer

The core technology of the user interaction layer

is to realise the human-computer interaction between

the operator and the software system. It contains

various applications and interfaces on the client side,

through which the user can edit and process data and

information, most of which will be displayed to the

user in the form of diagrams, tables and virtual

scenes.

(2) System function layer

The system function layer is the core of the entire

digital twin-based rapid response manufacturing

system and contains most of the programs that

implement the business logic. It receives information

data from users and production sites through data

interfaces, processes the information data and is also

responsible for issuing instructions to production

sites.

(3) Object layer and support layer, the

The object layer and support layer use the open

source NHibernate framework for database

connectivity, which aims to manipulate data by

establishing a mapping of entity classes of database

objects and thus data manipulation, the core of which

lies in the manipulation of the underlying data and

data storage.

3.2 Twin Warehouse Model

The movement of the model in the virtual warehouse

mainly translates, rotates and scales the 3D model

equally. The 3D model represents the spatial position

of each vertex by coordinates and changes the

coordinate vector to achieve the motion of the 3D

model. The initial position P = (x, y, z) is expressed

as (x, y, z, 1) and the transformed position P' = (x', y',

z') is expressed as (x', y', z', 1), the translation,

rotation and scaling of the 3D model can be expressed

by equation (1) as follows.













sttt

pbbb

zyxPMP

zyx

333231

232221

131211

)1,,,('

(1)

Where M is the four-dimensional coordinate

transformation matrix, by changing the four-

dimensional transformation matrix can manipulate

the three-dimensional model for movement,

translation transformation, three-dimensional model

from point P to P' point, the transformation process

can be seen in equation (2).

ICEMME 2022 - The International Conference on Economic Management and Model Engineering

594

)1,,,(

0100

0010

0001

)1,,,('

zyx

tztytx

ttt

zyxPMP +++=













(2)

The tx, ty, tz in equation (2) represent the distance

the model travels along the X, Y and Z axes

respectively.

4 ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH OF

A DIGITAL TWIN

TECHNOLOGY-BASED

INFORMATION

VISUALIZATION PLATFORM

FOR THE SMART

HEALTHCARE SUPPLY CHAIN

4.1 System Functional Module Design

The main modules of the hospital supply chain

management system based on digital twin technology

are divided into four main modules: permission

management, procurement management, item

management and supplier management as shown in

Figure 1, and a number of sub-functions are

subdivided under these four main modules as

described below.

Figure 1: System Function Module

There are four sub-modules involved in the

Permissions Management module, namely User

Management, Role Management, Task Management

and Function Management, of which User

Management is mainly used to manage the basic

information of users and their role assignment

information. The role management module not only

needs to manage the basic information of the role but

also needs to have the function of managing users

under the role and the function of assigning tasks to

the role.

The procurement management module contains

eight main sub-modules, namely pending items,

inventory information management, purchase plan

creation, purchase plan review, purchase order

response, purchase order creation, purchase order

confirmation and purchase order acceptance. Pending

items are mainly for the user to show the pending

items in the procurement management process such

as suppliers need to see their supply applications and

supply orders to be responded and shipped, while the

warehouse owner needs to see information such as

pending audits, new purchase plans and supply

applications from suppliers. The Inventory

Management module provides the user with the

ability to view the inventory of items, and also

provides the ability to set maximum and minimum

stock limits, which needs to be synchronised with the

hospital on a regular basis to share inventory data.

The item management module is mainly for

managing the information of hospital items. In this

Intelligent medical supply chain information

visualization platform

Permission management

purchasing management

Item management

Supplier management

A Smart Healthcare Supply Chain Information Visualisation Platform Based on Digital Twin Technology

595

module, users can add, delete, change and view the

item information and other basic operations.

The supplier management module mainly

involves five sub-modules: supplier information

management, qualification application, qualification

audit, SMS records and qualification testing. The

supplier information management module is mainly

used to maintain the basic information of suppliers,

and the qualification application module is mainly

used to enter the supplier's qualification certificate

information and upload the corresponding pictures.

4.2 Components of the Digital Twin-

based Inventory Management Sub-

module

The inventory information management sub-module

of the digital twin-based procurement management

module consists of four main components, namely

physical inventory, virtual inventory, inventory

service system and inventory twin data. Physical

inventory mainly refers to the actual warehouse site,

which is an objective physical collection of inventory,

including equipment resources, material resources,

tooling resources, etc. Virtual inventory is a digital

representation of the physical production line and is a

faithful digital mirror of physical inventory. Its

function is to monitor, forecast and control inventory

in real time. The inventory service system is a

collection of data-driven service systems that receive

the inventory data uploaded by the inventory twin and

use it to provide support and services for the digital

control of inventory, such as management control and

optimisation services. The inventory twin contains

data related to physical inventory, virtual inventory

and inventory service systems, as well as data derived

from the fusion of the three, and is used to drive

physical inventory, virtual inventory and inventory

service systems.

4.3 System Performance Testing

Prior to the performance testing of the smart

healthcare supply chain information visualisation

platform, a certain amount of basic data was first

created for the main information tables, including

1000 items of supplier information, 1000 items of

item information, 1000 items of purchasing plan, etc.

After completing the data construction, the main

functional interfaces of different modules of the

system were stress tested. Ensure that the system

performance meets the requirements.

After the performance test of the system, the

response time without concurrent system will be

400ms~700ms, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Performance Test of Functional Interfaces of the System

Monitoring

point

No concurrent system response

time (ms)

100 Concurrent system response

time (ms)

200 Concurrent system

response time (ms)

1 692 714 1021

2 495 772 924

3 528 777 854

4 600 834 955

5 514 701 914

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Figure 2: Test Results.

As shown in Figure 2, which is a performance test

of some of the important interfaces of the system with

different response times under different numbers of

concurrency, it can be concluded that most of the

interfaces can achieve a response speed within

1000ms with less than 200 concurrency. The

requirements for non-functional requirements are

met.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In order to improve the level and quality of healthcare

services in hospitals, the entire supply chain of items

in hospitals needs to be extended to ensure the

traceability of medical drugs and equipment and to

improve the efficiency of the entire depot

procurement. Therefore, the main implementation of

the smart medical supply chain information

visualisation platform proposed in this paper is based

on digital twin technology, which enables the sharing

of basic inventory and other information between

suppliers and hospitals. Due to the lack of time and

limitations of the authors' capabilities, as well as the

immature development and application of medical

big data, the research is inevitably deficient, and the

main issues are as follows: With changes in the

medical environment, the gradual development of big

data technology and changes in the policy system, the

key technologies and main business applications of

the smart medical supply chain information

visualisation platform also need to be continuously

adjusted, optimised and improved in line with the

actual situation and needs.

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