Digital Twins Show Future of Healthcare in Texas

Houston-based Texas Children’s Hospital is leaping into the future of healthcare by leveraging digital twin technologies deployed by their long-standing IT partner Mark III Systems.

The hospital sought a tech stack that would enable multiple stakeholders – from its innovation team and care staff to architects and construction workers – to collaborate remotely on the design, build, and marketing of new labor and delivery rooms at their site in Austin, Texas.

Mark III Systems leveraged Dell Technologies’ Precision AI-Ready workstations with NVIDIA RTX GPUs to create digital twins – virtual representations – of the rooms, revolutionizing the hospital’s approach to strategy and care, driving efficiencies, and creating a blueprint for the future of healthcare.

“With the rooms under construction, the hospital needed a way of re-creating the physical space in a virtual environment that allowed for ‘walk-throughs’ of the rooms,” the Dell Technologies case study reads. “This AR/VR element demanded a stack that could guarantee high levels of processing and performance power, in a form that was physically accessible – and with workflows virtually accessible – in real-time, from anywhere.”

Mark III Systems’ tech solution allowed the hospital to create to-scale replicas of rooms as well as digital renderings of objects that can be manipulated in a virtual work environment.

“The AI space is evolving but there wasn’t an all-encompassing IT ecosystem for customers. Dell Technologies is solving that with its AI Factory with NVIDIA,” said Seth Sweetin, a systems architect at Mark III Systems.

Hospital staff could use 3D avatars to navigate the space or put on a VR headset to embody the avatar. This was critical as it allowed valuable input on room design, layout, and functionality.

“By sharing their experiences with construction workers and designers, medical staff could access equipment more efficiently, reduce their number of steps and ultimately provide a better experience for patients,” the case study says.

The digital twin also allowed architects, construction firms, and medical staff to collaborate on the design of the new labor rooms, no matter where they were based.

“Enabling remote collaboration has saved the hospital significant time and money in removing the need for individuals to travel to the site, reducing its environmental footprint,” the study says.

The digital twin technology also helped the hospital save money by avoiding making costly changes during construction.

“Together, Dell Technologies and Mark III Systems have created a technological blueprint for the use of digital twins in the future of healthcare and beyond,” the case study concludes.