Intelligent Twins in Healthcare

From artifacts to living simulations.

Traditional research and journey maps cannot keep pace with how people actually behave. For example, market research indicates that users and consumers tend to over-report by about 22% compared to their actual behavior. And as channels multiply and attention fragments, insights on paper miss critical signals. That’s why at Huge, we built Intelligent Twins: a living, learning simulation of real human behavior.

The Intelligent Twins are more than a persona or archetype. They're a living digital entity that learns, adapts and guides. It's a tool capable of unifying insight, strategy, content and performance into a single, adaptive system. Unlike a digital twin used in drug development or treatment simulations, Intelligent Twins are designed to predict and simulate patient journeys. They describe behavior and anticipate it; act on it and evolve with real-world feedback.

Powered by LIVE (Huge’s proprietary and secure data engine with over 2B data points) and enhanced by generative AI, the Twins reveal how patients search, decide and act across channels in real time.

Used with 80% of our clients, across industries from healthcare to finance, gaming and home improvement, LIVE enhances creative and strategic insights, while the Twins apply machine learning and generative AI on top to build simulations and synthesize patterns.

Together, they merge qualitative and quantitative signals at unprecedented scale in real time, exposing where journeys break down and why. What once sat in reports now becomes dynamic, stress-testable simulation that turns strategy from instinct to action.

Why honest patient-centricity matters.

Health systems promise to put patients first, but traditional methods often fall short. Intelligent Twins close that gap by offering:

• Scale with depth. Instead of tracking hundreds of patients over months, Twins process billions of data points from millions of journeys in a fraction of the time.

• Bias removed. Patterns emerge directly from data, surfacing behaviors leaders might otherwise overlook.

• True fidelity. Rather than best-guess maps, Twins simulate how patients and caregivers actually move through care, where they succeed, stall or struggle.

Why healthcare needs this most.

The stakes here are not merely higher, they are human. Patients aren’t browsing casually; they’re seeking clarity, awaiting life-changing news, and making difficult decisions under pressure. Analysis of existing health platforms reveal a growing demand for digital experiences that empower consumers with anticipatory and even agentic capabilities.

The Intelligent Twins help systems design with empathy and urgency across critical touchpoints like:

• Symptom search.

• Finding a doctor.

• Care education.

• Follow-up and support.

The Twins uncover friction traditional research misses, including confusing language, buried caregiver resources, and broken handoffs between digital and in-person care. Then they validate what matters most with LIVE’s over 2 billion real-world data points. The result is journeys that feel less like navigating a system and more like being supported by one.

The Twins in action.

One simulation revealed just how broken the “Find a Doctor” journey can be. The goal was simple: to schedule a first appointment online. The likelihood of success? Extremely low, bordering on complete goal failure.

To understand the scale of the problem, we segmented 116,000 new visitors, over a one-year period, who are looking for a new doctor. The Twins showed how a high-intent audience was funneled into failure:

• The passive researchers — 64.4% (74.7k people). These visitors arrived with intent but never advanced to a high-commitment action like booking or calling. The initial search experience was so inefficient it deterred most from even trying to convert.

• The high-friction attempters — 33% (38.5k people). These visitors fought through the broken online booking flow. Even if they eventually succeeded, the frustrating process eroded trust in the brand.

• The channel abandons — 2.4% (2.8k people). Visitors who tried to book online, failed and were forced to call instead. This raised call-center costs and delivered a poor experience.

The Twins proved what traditional research often misses: more than 64% of interested prospects were lost at the top of the funnel, while the rest faced unnecessary friction. The simulation described the problem and quantified it, showing how systemic breakdowns directly impact patient trust, operational costs and growth potential.

From reactive to anticipatory care.

Systems no longer need to wait for failures to show up in surveys or drop-off metrics. Intelligent Twins simulate outcomes, pressure-test interventions and build confidence in decisions that affect real lives.

By shifting from reactive fixes to anticipatory design, providers can:

• Reduce confusion and anxiety.

• Strengthen trust and loyalty.

• Improve outcomes across the continuum.

Simulating patient behavior requires absolute trust. Each Intelligent Twin is a proprietary, isolated instance. The brand’s data is secured, private and accessible only to authorized users.

Built on Google Cloud with multi-layered safeguards, Intelligent Twins meet and exceed HIPAA and regulatory standards through:

• Data isolation and encryption: dedicated, access-controlled storage per client.

• Privacy by design: strict access controls, role-based permissions and automated compliance workflows.

• Application security: advanced protections against unauthorized access.

• AI governance and monitoring: responsible data use with continuous threat detection.

With Intelligent Twins, providers gain powerful patient journey simulation backed by the highest levels of security, privacy, and compliance.

The new standard.

In healthcare, every moment matters. Intelligent Twins give providers the foresight to design care that feels predictive, personal and profoundly human.

The future of patient experience isn’t reactive. It’s anticipatory.

Frank Rauss is Executive Creative Director and Christie McFall is SVP of Client Partnership at Huge.