Patient Monitoring Roundtable No°2 | 2026: Digital twins & dashboards for data-driven therapy – hype or real impact?
Save the Date: The third roundtable of the year will take place on April 20 on the topic “Hospital at Home: Wearables as the Foundation for Safe Out-of-Hospital Care” at BeST (Charité’s Berlin Simulation and Training Center). Interested? Then book your ticket here to attend in person or online!
“Digital twins & dashboards for data-driven therapy strategies in clinical practice and research” – Under this guiding theme, we gathered on March 12, 2026 at Baltic, Charité, for the second Patient Monitoring Roundtable (PMRT) of the year. The session focused on a critical question for modern healthcare: how can we transform overwhelming amounts of clinical data into meaningful, actionable insights?
When Data Overwhelms: Why Healthcare Needs Better Dashboards
The keynote by Dr. Mirja Mittermaier opened with a familiar reality in modern healthcare: too many systems, too many logins, and an overwhelming amount of data. While medical knowledge is doubling at an extraordinary pace, clinicians still struggle to access the right information at the right time.
Her central message was clear: Healthcare doesn’t have a data problem – it has a clarity problem.
Fragmentation Is the Real Challenge
Today’s healthcare systems are highly fragmented. Disconnected IT systems and isolated data silos increase the cognitive burden on clinicians, who often spend more time searching for information than making decisions.
Clinical dashboards promise a way forward – but only if they are designed with real clinical needs in mind.
From Data to Decisions
At their best, dashboards turn complex data into clear, actionable insights. By integrating information from multiple sources – such as electronic health records, lab results, and vital signs – they create a unified view of the patient. The goal is simple but powerful: Enable clinicians to understand a patient’s condition within seconds.
According to Dr. Mittermaier, successful dashboards are:
- Goal-oriented
- User-centered
- Embedded in clinical workflows
- Visually clear
- Focused on relevant information
In short, a good dashboard doesn’t show more data – it shows the right data.
From Data to Meaning: Why Dashboards Still Fall Short
Despite their potential, many dashboards fall short due to poor integration, limited interoperability, and regulatory complexity. Crucially, interoperability is not only a technical issue but a semantic one – data must not only be exchangeable, but also consistently understood. True clinical value emerges when data is placed in context: individual data points become actionable only when combined with time, thresholds, and clinical logic. This shift from raw data to meaningful clinical concepts turns dashboards into real decision-support tools and enables a broader transformation – from retrospective analysis toward real-time monitoring, early warning systems, and AI-supported decision-making.
Digital Twins: Simulating the Future of Personalized Medicine
In the second keynote, Dr. Matthias König, Systems Medicine of Liver group Leader at HU Berlin, presented digital twins as a powerful approach to personalized medicine, combining mechanistic models with interactive dashboards. These virtual patient representations, continuously updated with real-world data, allow clinicians to simulate drug behavior and predict individual responses. He highlighted how PBPK models capture variability across patients and how complex simulations can be translated into intuitive clinical tools – enabling more proactive, data-driven, and patient-centered treatment decisions.
Outlook
Achieving this vision requires interoperable data, intuitive tools, and close collaboration across clinical, technical, and regulatory domains—paving the way for more predictive, proactive, and patient-centered care.
Workshops: Bringing Healthcare to Life – Dashboards, Data, and Digital Twins
1. Early Warning Scores – Early Warning Scores – Crafting Actionable Dashboards
In the medtech industry, Early Warning Scores (EWS) are being developed to support the early detection of adverse events through multimodal, resource-efficient monitoring. One of the most current solutions is a web-based, on-premise tool integrated into medical devices, allowing data import (e.g. lab values) and HL7 export to EHR systems.
In the workshop around the EWS web tool, one key insight emerged: while there is a strong desire for a single, comprehensive dashboard, this is neither practical nor effective. Instead, specialized, intuitive dashboards tailored to specific clinical contexts are essential to support decision-making in increasingly complex hospital environments.
2. Clinical Dashboard Design – From Data to Decisions
In Dr. Mittermaier’s workshop, we explored how to design clinical dashboards that truly support decision-making in practice. Using a “Clinical Dashboard Design Canvas,” we started with the clinical question, defined users and workflows, and identified the most relevant data and visualizations. Dashboards only create value when they are built around specific use cases – such as monitoring, medication management, or quality tracking.
Effective dashboards must integrate seamlessly into workflows, highlight critical information at a glance, and turn data into actionable insights.
3. Digital Twins – Modeling Reality and Beyond
In Dr. König’s workshop on “Digital Twins,” participants had the opportunity to creatively represent their own vision of a digital twin using Lego – for example, through a mirror, a Lego figure, and its intentionally distorted reflection. The discussion explored whether a model can ever fully represent reality. It was also emphasized that digital twins operate bidirectionally: data flows from the patient into the model and, through predictions, is fed back into the real world.
The takeaway from the three workshops:
There is no one-size-fits-all dashboard – solutions must be tailored to their clinical context.
Conclusion
More data doesn’t automatically lead to better care. What matters is how data is structured, interpreted, and presented. Clinical dashboards can bridge this gap – but only if they are built around clarity, context, and real clinical workflows.
Because in the end, it’s not about displaying information. It’s about enabling better decisions – and better patient care.
Next PMRT: April 20 at BeST
We look forward to welcoming you on April 20, 2026, at the third Patient Monitoring Roundtable of the year at BeST (Berlin Simulation & Training Center) at Charité! Our focus topic will be Hospital at Home. Don’t miss it!
The Patient Monitoring Roundtable is organized by INCH Health in partnership with the Institute of Medical Informatics at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
We also thank Dr. Mirja Mittermaier and Dr. Matthias König for inspiring keynotes and the great workshops, and all participants for their engaged collaboration in developing future scenarios and visions for intelligent, safe, and patient-centered care.
A special thank you goes to our sponsors Masimo, Dräger, and Philips, whose support makes the Patient Monitoring Roundtable possible.
