5G to Transform Health Care

Article: https://www.iotevolutionhealth.com/topics/iotevolutionhealth/articles/436795-
how-5g-could-help-transform-health-care.htm
https://www.ericsson.com/assets/local/networked-
society/consumerlab/reports/2017/healthcare-to-homecare-report.pdf

Key Points:

 5G networks will be capable of supporting such applications as remote monitoring

through medical-grade wearables, virtual doctor-patient interactions, and remotely
operated robotic surgery.
 wearables will enable consumers to take more control over their health care;
 that online consultations supported via 5G will reduce “painful” patient wait times;
 that connected health care supported by 5G will make better doctors and health care
available to more people, regardless of location; and
 that 5G will make centralized patient records more accessible, leading to more
efficiency and better outcomes.
 5G will enable the network of Tactile internet
o The Tactile Internet will enable haptic interaction with visual feedback.
o The term haptic relates to the sense of touch, in particular the perception and
manipulation of objects
o the Tactile Internet will be enabled by the IoT and robots
o In healthcare, medical expertise is still largely confined to the location of the
physician, but in the world of the Tactile Internet it will be available anywhere
and at any time
 The transformation is explored across three healthcare situations: preventative,
routine and post-operative care.
 Eg: The US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first automated medical device
that monitors the blood sugar levels for type 1 diabetes and automatically injects a dose of
insulin.
 Solve Patient’s Problems:
o frustrated by long appointment wait times
o inability to get a convenient appointment and nonavailability of doctors of their
choice
o Physical presence
o inability to get personalized attention from doctors
o Medical wearables can be a boon to elderly or homebound patients, and help with
remote monitoring and medication.
o People would like to have home sensors that monitor the elderly, detect emergency
situations and send alerts that dispatch ambulance services when required
 Decentralized care
  Increased use of wearables, sensors and other connected devices will generate large
volumes of diagnostic data, which need to be combined with electronic health records
(EHRs) from clinicians and stored at a secured central location.
o Such data speed up diagnosis: Access to patients’ health records during routine
consultations can improve diagnosis and reduce medical errors during emergencies
o Cons: any sudden outage, such as a connectivity failure, can make patients feel
unsafe. For instance, human error recently caused the outage of Amazon Web
Services (AWS), resulting in disruption of many websites’ services.4 Such an outage
in the healthcare system could have fatal implications – meaning that, as care moves
closer to patients and data moves to central repositories, high-availability networks
and data centers become critical. Hence 5G is necessary
 Negatives:
o The transformation will make online interactions more common, which threatens a
crucial human element of care: the doctor-patient relationship.
o A patient may become just a record in the database leading to a doctor failing to
establish an emotional connection with the patient

Article: https://www.vodafone.com.au/red-wire/health-5g-meets-iot

 Medical device company Medtronic has developed digital blood-glucose implants

that use sensors to measure glucose levels in the tissue fluid just under a patient’s
skin. These sensors connect wirelessly to a device that provides both patients and
clinicians with early alerts if any abnormalities are detected
 In Taiwan, the Taipei government is testing a Citizen Telecare Service System (CTSS),
which hopes to help elderly citizens control their personal healthcare. Using the city’s
free Wifi network and employing algorithms on mobiles, computers and servers, the
system aims to provide biometric monitoring, abnormal health alerts, education, and
medical assistance to its ageing population.
 AI’s ability to assist with data processing and analytics also means more accurate
modelling to help doctors predict which patients are at greatest risk from various
conditions.
 5G speeds means latency (the time between a computing command and the
execution of that command) will drop, which makes things like telemedical diagnosis,
mobile surgery, and other real-time treatments a reality.
 Vodafone’s mHealth Remote Care Services and tools, which are paving the way into
the future for physician and patient engagement.
 Vodafone’s mHealth which offers at-home monitoring and management of patient
conditions and, for elderly citizens, Assisted Living, which helps to alleviate loneliness
and isolation make performing daily tasks in and out of home, easier.
Challenges:

 Internet connectivity
 Accuracy of devices
Article: https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/journey-5g
  The healthcare industry is moving fast toward a complete digital environment.
Breakthrough innovations, such as continuously monitoring every aspect of patient
vitals through multisensory environments, teleporting doctors to a virtual
environment for remote haptic interactions with their patients, performing
technology-enabled remote surgeries or leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to
explore, compare sensory data and generate new medical insights.
 AI and big data: When big data analytics is performed with the help of human- and
machine-augmented intelligence and machine learning, doctors can generate new
healthcare insights and make diagnoses and lifesaving decisions in real time,
detecting and preventing anomalies in their patients before they occur.
 With network slicing technology, a health provider will be able to virtually “slice” the
network and dedicate slices for critical applications, such as remote surgeries or
teleporting personnel to a virtual hospital environment
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/blog/healthcare-on-5g/