Towards a Healthier Hospital Environment: The Role of Digital Twins in Achieving Optimal Environmental Comfort

Indoor environmental comfort is fundamental to human health as people spend 90% of their time indoors. This aspect is even more crucial in hospitals, where the concept of health is closely linked to well‐being, ethics and environmental aspects. Emerging methodologies and technologies such as digital twin, building information modelling, the internet of things, sensing technologies and data analytics offer new opportunities to ensure healthier environments and more efficient building management. This paper provides an assessment of how digitalisation can support decision‐making processes related to maintaining high levels of indoor environmental comfort in hospital settings, particularly by analysing how real‐time data processing and the application of machine learning can promote proactive interventions in these facilities. The methodological approach was based on four phases: defining the objectives of the digital twin, identifying the input data to build and feed the digital model, defining the KPIs to evaluate the system's correct functioning and identifying the enabling technologies to be integrated into the system to achieve the set goal. The result is a digital twin for managing the operating room and its related services, with the aim of guiding decisions based on accurate data and improving operational efficiency, levels of environmental comfort, and safety regarding the diffusion of medical gases.