The Future of Digital Twins: Q&A with Rudy Kuhn

Rudy Kuhn
Lead transformation evangelist
Celonis

The pharma industry is embracing digital twins. Rudy Kuhn, lead transformation evangelist at Celonis spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about this new technology and how it’s incorporated into a variety of processes.

Pharmaceutical Executive: How are companies in the life sciences industry using digital twins to understand, predict, and improve operational processes?
Rudy Kuhn: The need to adapt to the rapid pace of change has never been more critical, particularly for life sciences and pharmaceutical companies. In order to adapt successfully, leaders must have a deep understanding of their organization’s processes and how things run.

To have a better view of what’s happening inside their organization, many companies around the world of all sizes are turning to digital twins built on process mining. These digital twins allow for accurate insights into the operational flow of an organization, letting companies see where the areas for improvement are.

In a recent report, leaders at some of the world’s most well-known pharmaceutical and life sciences companies identified several areas of concern, including reducing costs and manual rework, and speeding up trial and product launches to name just a few. The use of digital twins and process mining technology can help solve many of these as well as unlock new areas for improvement.

For example, Merck saved $7 million from working capital improvements, automation, and risk reduction via process optimization. AstraZeneca has also utilized the insights from process mining and digital twins to reimagine financial control compliance. It was able to take a control that took 10 days to prep, plus an additional three to four days to operate, and completely eliminate any prep time. This kind of optimization frees up valuable time and resources, enabling companies to focus on innovation and output.

PE: How does process mining enable the creation of digital twins?
Rudy Kuhn: Organizational digital twins allow companies to analyze products, services, and processes, and address issues before they arise by mirroring unique physical objects, processes, or even people. They are crucial in a competitive market, where businesses are looking for new ways to maximize their efficiencies and budgets, while also maintaining and increasing customer satisfaction. This allows for unprecedented insight into the inner workings of an organization, giving leaders the ability to identify and address problems, highlight improvement opportunities, and plan for the future.

Process mining uses direct data from operational systems to create a visualization of processes. The combined use of digital twins and process mining gives an additional layer of organizational context, allowing for more context beyond the ‘what’ of process operations, and delves into the ‘why’ things are happening the way they are, allowing for strategic, informed decision making and advanced simulation.

PE: How are digital twins benefitting personalized healthcare?
Kuhn: Despite major technological advances and innovations over the decades within global healthcare systems, patients have become accustomed to dealing with challenges, such as scheduling errors, misplacement of test results, or the inability to get access to a prescription when it’s needed, among many others.

These issues stem from poor internal processes, and a great disconnect within the respective organizations. These often stem from the fact that there are many teams and functions, each with their own language and ways of working. This results in a lack of visibility, and the inability to run smoothly.

The patient journey is complex and reliant on what they are looking to accomplish, be it a routine check-up, or visiting the ER for an emergency. With so many variables, as well as overlap with departments, such as billing or pharmaceutical supply chain, it’s easy for patients to fall through the cracks of inefficient processes and bottlenecks.

Digital twins paired with process intelligence help address these inefficiencies, by allowing organizations to get a comprehensive look at their processes, and where the gaps are.

For example, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) which is part of the NHS, was able to improve the patient experience using process intelligence. It showed The Trust that patients were canceling appointments last-minute when reminder texts were sent, which didn’t allow enough time to notify a patient on a waitlist for care. The Trust was able to reevaluate, change the system and give those in need of care the ability to see a provider sooner, if a cancellation came through. After the initial change and trial, they were able to see an additional 700 patients a week.

Digital twins are revolutionizing the way we can deliver better healthcare and therefore better quality of life.

PE: What do you think the future of digital twins holds for the life sciences industry?
Kuhn: Digital twins will continue to enable process optimization for healthcare organizations, as their use is more widely adopted. Furthermore, Gartner recently noted that by 2026, 25% of global enterprises will have embraced process mining platforms as a first step to creating a digital twin for business operations.

As digital twins continue to advance, their use will only become more focused on systems and processes, especially within an organization’s financial and supply chain teams. For life sciences and pharmaceuticals, this could result in reduced issues with filling prescriptions, or less gaps in the patient billing process.

In addition, many organizations are facing the complex challenge of addressing increased workloads and talent shortages. Process mining and digital twins can identify opportunities for automation, which can free employees from repetitive, time-consuming tasks, and instead allows them to focus on work that truly changes.