Impact Of 5G In Transforming Healthcare Industry
A remarkable opportunity to build an integrated ecosystem for new opportunities in healthcare and other industries has been made possible by digital innovations such as the continued development of telehealth, the creation of fifth generation wireless networks (5G), artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as machine learning and deep learning, big data (BD) and supercomputing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and digital security capabilities such as blockchain.
The 5G networks have an extremely low latency of less than one millisecond (ms) of delay in comparison to about 70 milliseconds of lag on the 4G network. Moreover, the data transmission speed of 5G is about 100-fold higher than the current 10 megabits per second on 4G, as it uses higher-frequency millimetre waves compared to existing networks.
With the introduction of 5G, healthcare has evolved to become more data-oriented and is no longer only a system for the supply of care or services. Patient applications, particularly those used outside of traditional hospital facilities, are the area of the healthcare sector that offers the operators of 5G the most potential. The expansion of telemedicine, online consultations, health monitoring, remote surgeries, and similar applications are a few use cases that support this.
Democratization of Healthcare
The 5G healthcare models are deemed to transform healthcare into a more customer-centric environment, with a focus on providing the patient care and services at reasonable prices. Instilling customers at the epicentre of ecosystem wherein every stakeholder being directly affected or affecting them. Moreover, it will also bring a paradigm shift in people’s approach to healthcare, with people opting for preventive healthcare against the conventional necessity-based approach towards it. This will be possible with the synergy of data and artificial intelligence (AI) enabled by the widespread use of 5G technology in India.
"Remote monitoring, real-time medical imaging, remote surgery, and medical data management will be possible in the health care segment once 5G comes into play. These methods will help doctors visualise their patients' conditions better, eliminate guesswork, and provide faster, more accurate diagnoses. In use cases, such as connected ambulances, emergency medical technicians (EMT) will be equipped to share a patient's symptoms, vitals, and medical records between doctors and the ambulance staff using 4K video calls to provide treatment," said Peeyush Vaish, Partner and Telecom sector leader, Deloitte India.
The following enhancements will primarily be driven by the advent of 5G technology:
Start Ups & Patent Filings
5G may enable a surge in IP licencing agreements. The trend in patent application filings shows an increase from 9000 in 2012 to around 25,000 in 2020.
"5G will actually give a boost to innovation as well as patent filings. So the primary area of innovation will be the things that were not possible before because of the limitations of data. Start-ups, because they are very agile by nature, understand the new trends in the industry. Hence, they represent speed in innovation. This is only possible with start-ups, as a lot of times, bigger companies tend to have a longer planning style, like a strategy planning cycle. So it would take them six months or two quarters just to decide whether to do this or not, whereas start-ups will begin working on a solution within the next five days. So, you can expect a lot of patents to come from medical device and telemedicine companies, specifically in the health tech system, which is connected by nature," said Gaurav Parchani, Co-Founder & CTO of Dozee.
Cost Reduction And Accessibility
The global pandemic has made our current healthcare system's sclerosis clear. The influx of patients with Covid-19 at various emergency rooms and intensive care units around the nation was overwhelming. As potential clients for elective and other less urgent procedures cancel their appointments, other practise areas are either barren or haemorrhaging money.
According to STL Partners' projection, 5G may save the global healthcare sector, as a whole, some USD 94 billion in costs by 2030. However, the real value goes beyond money because it has the potential to significantly enhance health outcomes.
Given the approximately USD 1 trillion rise in healthcare spending in the US during the previous 20 years. The new ecosystem prioritises bringing affordable, high-quality healthcare to all people.
5G will enable always-on device connectivity, enable telemedicine solutions, and improve data sharing between patients, carers, and insurers in the healthcare insurance sector, taking connected health care to a new level. Increased data availability will result in more accurate health and life insurance statistics, which will lower rates and support a more individualised, proactive, and predictive approach to health insurance where clients are encouraged to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Leveraging The Pharma Industry
A pharmaceutical business discovers, develops and markets medicines. Pharma businesses are already delivering their products globally thanks to the use of 5G in the healthcare industry. Pharmaceutical manufacturing is, unsurprisingly, highly regulated due to strict quality requirements and patient safety concerns. Industry standards and standard operating procedures are also motivated by this. However, the requirements of the new pharma reality cannot be met by the current pharma IT infrastructures, which can still be decades old. 5G standardisation promises to develop a globally uniform networking infrastructure for the enhanced industrial internet and Internet of Things (IoT) services.
End-to-end digitalized pharmaceutical solutions can be implemented on the basis of these capabilities. Additionally, if AI develops further, it is anticipated to play a bigger role in R&D, notably in the life sciences. Hence, 5G will also incentivize pharma and tech companies to enhance the drug discovery process.
Revolutionise Product Distribution
The distribution of healthcare has never been limited to delivery. It involves safely and effectively delivering the appropriate medications to the appropriate patients at the appropriate times. The logistics specialists handle this. 5G can assist pharmaceutical products in moving through the supply chain using edge computing and blockchain technologies and can also help track and verify them. A 5G-enabled blockchain-based supply network for the pharmaceutical business also provides encrypted contracts and channels for communication, as well as built-in security checks at every link in the chain of custody.
Role Of Government/Policy Makers
In order for the 5G industry to reach its full potential, the government must play a key role in providing secure services.The security of 5G is crucial because it will virtually likely enable sensors and other devices to communicate and make decisions without the need for human intervention.
The government will need to release radio spectrum that is currently reserved for other uses, such as radar and satellite systems. More generally, the disruption caused by 5G will force governments to regulate companies and government institutions. With 5G, the use of augmented and artificial intelligence will be possible, but regulations to distinguish between decisions at the discretion of people and those that should be left to computers may be necessary, especially in a healthcare context.
Some healthcare services could undergo a revolution thanks to 5G, such as the ability to early diagnose serious diseases with remote analysis of vital signs recorded by body-worn devices, although this too would require regulation on the usage of such information.
Energy Effeciency
With its high speed and bandwidth, 5G is capable of transmitting information like prescriptions, diagnostic test results, medical imaging, and other medical reports almost instantly. It can enable high-quality video interactions too.
All of this functionality growth occurs even as 5G, with its low power requirements, lowers the energy use of every connected device. But because 5G broadcasts at higher frequencies, signal degradation poses a bigger problem, necessitating the need for several "base stations" (approximately every 250 m). However, such a deployment offers a rare chance to bring all those technologies locally, in real time, to the point of care.
Cyber Attacks and Data Security
We are trying to go digital. When we move to the cloud, many of these things become cloud enabled and cloud connected. This becomes perceptible to cyber-attacks, which is where two things can happen. The first is obviously data security and all of the data. And second, more importantly, is the private information of the patients, the privacy.
"Cyber attacks have no direct relationship to 5G, but they have a lot of indirect relation, because with 5G, a lot of new solutions are emerging, and a lot of people who were not in healthcare are coming into healthcare." So, for them to understand healthcare regulations, it is very important. We have the first draft of the privacy or data privacy policy that was released some time ago. And more and more things will be built over it. We will also draw inspiration from the European data protection regulations, GDPR, and the American data protection regulations (HIPAA). Our own guidelines that were released recently are being worked upon right now as the first draft," said Gaurav Parchani, Co-Founder & CTO of Dozee.
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