Revolutionise Healthcare with 5G

Introduction

 

Malaysia's healthcare market is expected to grow 127% from RM56.3 billion in 2017 to RM127.9 billion in 2027. 5G is expected to bring heightened efficiency, particularly by allowing for patient monitoring capabilities and facilitating remote access to healthcare, thereby minimising hospital costs and burdens. 1 Beyond that, 5 G-enabled digital services could prove valuable outcomes across the healthcare value chain: hospital service providers, clinics, emergency & ambulatory care delivery, medical training hospitals & universities, relevant hospital facilities and asset management services.

 

5G is the catalyst towards Smart Hospitals.

 

Imagine that you are admitted to a hospital. A smart scheduling system ensures you have a bed; you sign in to your hospital using facial recognition or a fingerprint scanner; thanks to an efficient digital system, your doctor instantly pulls information with all your medical history; and once a treatment is decided, the prescription is automatically delivered to your bedside — all of this with complete transparency, from scheduling to diagnosis, prescription, and payment. During your stay, you’re monitored using fall detection devices to ensure your safety and an alert is raised when a patient is at risk of falling. 2UK’s first 5G-connected hospital is currently conducting trials on e-observations designed to monitor patients’ vital signs, allowing clinicians to use handheld devices to update patient records digitally and make live observations. This will save valuable time by enabling doctors to complete their rounds more efficiently and ensure accurate record-keeping for each patient.

5G in hospitals opens the door to a range of new applications, such as real-time tracking of patients’ conditions, remote monitoring and round-the-clock monitoring of medicines and equipment. Data collection from various applications already occurs extensively in hospitals. However, these data sources today might not always be integrated, which can create inefficiencies and delays in care. The 5 G-enabled smart hospital concept promotes data exchange between medical devices, electronic health record systems, and patient monitoring devices. Furthermore, an integrated AI-enabled hospital monitoring system will be the future of hospitals by keeping track of patients’ conditions, monitoring thresholds, and ensuring real alarms are triggered and addressed by hospital management. With the help of 5G, healthcare providers can collect and transmit vast amounts of patient data in real time. AI-powered algorithms can analyse this data to identify patterns and insights that can improve patient care.

5G also addresses medical professionals who need to continually learn throughout to keep up with the latest medical innovations. 5G technology offers faster and more reliable data transfer rates, essential for real-time healthcare applications such as augmented reality (AR). With 5G, medical professionals can access and transfer large amounts of data quickly and seamlessly, which is critical for converting DICOM images into 3D holographic models in real-time. Using 5G-enabled AR headsets or other devices, medical professionals can view and interact with 3D holographic representations of patient data from anywhere, making it easier to collaborate with colleagues and consult experts in remote locations.

However, challenges such as healthcare policies and regulations still need to be addressed. We from DNB are keen to work with mobile network operators and hospital service providers to address these challenges to realise the potential of 5 G-enabled digital services.

 

How should you be prepared to adopt 5G?

 

It will be helpful to appoint an internal person or team who will ‘own’ 5G in your organisation and take the lead in plotting your 5G adoption roadmap. 5G will impact every part of the business and must be considered from every angle. What 5 G-enabled digital services will be vital for your business?