ETHICA: Designing Human Digital Twins—A Systematic Review and Proposed Methodology

Abstract

Human Digital Twins (HDTs) have emerged as a key technology in digitalizing human-centered applications, able to enhance decision-making, personalize healthcare, and optimize workplace environments. However, despite a growing research body, there exists a critical lack of guidance for designing sophisticated, user-centric HDTs. In addressing this gap, this paper reports a systematic literature review of 44 papers in the field of HDTs (published between 2022 and 2023) to distill key design process insights and identify gaps in the current understanding and approaches to HDT design. Based on insights from this review, we introduce ETHICA, a systematic methodology that advocates for an iterative development process, emphasizing stakeholder collaboration and focusing on ethical and user-centric principles throughout the design life cycle. The resulting ETHICA methodology offers a robust blueprint for constructing sophisticated HDTs that harmonizes technological advancements with human-centered design and ethical considerations, encouraging a shift towards more holistic and human-centric approaches in the emerging field of Digital Twin technologies.

Keywords

• Agile
• artificial intelligence
• big data
• complex system modeling
• design
• development process