Tremendous Benefit to Healthcare with Private LTE and 5G Networks

In our 5G in Health Care (AN-5234) Application Analysis Report, ABI Research forecasts 5G revenue in healthcare will grow from US$2.3 million in 2021 to US$399 million in 2026, at a staggering CAGR of 137%. This revenue is forecast to primarily come from private healthcare providers, with the rest coming from healthcare payers (e.g., consumers using wellbeing wearables) and the public healthcare sector.

5G is set to transform the healthcare sector by actualizing use cases such as remote surgery, telemetry, etc., that can increase accessibility to better healthcare and improve healthcare standards and allowing Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to penetrate new value chains.

CSPs are already hopping on the opportunity: for example, this year AT&T started working with Rush University Medical Center in Chicago to begin 5G-based healthcare pilot projects. An eldercare facility in the Netherlands called Park Stanislaus has deployed a private LTE network utilizing software developed by Druid Software and small cells by Corning’s SpiderCloud. It is deployed in the 1800 MHz spectrum and connects multiple sensors embedded in patient wearables, nurse call devices, and cameras and transmits them to smartphones for the staff. It would be able to alert nurses and staff members when a patient needs help and coordinate responses to increase staff efficiency.

One of private networks’ main appeals is full control of data by the firm and the ability to dedicate bandwidth and ensure higher availability for mission-critical applications. They also allow different users to have different Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) for use cases that have different bandwidths, reliability, or throughput requirements within the facility. This is done through network slicing, where multiple customized End-to-End (E2E) logical network slices with different SLAs are created within the private network, allowing for different applications depending on the user. For example, doctors with Emergency Room (ER) responsibilities or patients with critical monitoring devices could have a dedicated network slice that has higher throughput and reliability to ensure immediate responses, while internal communications such as X-rays could have a dedicated network slice with higher bandwidth and non-interference from unauthorized sources. Essentially, this would ensure that each use case has dedicated cellular resources that optimize Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and ensure that asset tracking or a patient browsing the web on their phone will not affect the network performance of, say, a remote surgery that requires deterministic networking.

ABI Research’s IoT Market Tracker – Worldwide (MD-IOTMWW-107) forecasts that, globally, healthcare and patient monitoring connections will grow from 77 million connections in 2019 to a total of 212 million connections in 2024. Out of these 212 million connections, 93% are forecasted to be wireless. The trend toward wireless healthcare provision would require an evaluation of the type of wireless connectivity used. Typically, healthcare facilities use fixed line connectivity as their prevalent communication technology. However, this is less than ideal, as patients are constantly being moved around for diagnostic or testing procedures. When wireless connectivity is used, it is typically Wi-Fi. However, Wi-Fi shares the same frequencies with the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) bands, and has to employ “listen before transmit,” which makes communications prone to network disturbances from jamming.

While private LTE is usually seen as a precursor to private 5G, it is still sufficient for many current healthcare use cases. Private LTE can support both high- (up to 300 Mbps) and low-data requirements while providing low latency in the range of 30 ms. This means that use cases such as video surveillance, which requires at least 100 ms and >20 Mbps, and basic sensors, which require 100 ms and Kbps-range data requirements, can already be supported. Private LTE networks also allow for industrial grade handovers from and to public roaming, which can allow healthcare facilities to begin tracking patient vitals even when they are out of the facility and in an ambulance. Over-the-Air (OTA) encryption and device authentication can ensure patient data confidentiality as well.

However, with 5G, not only will the number of use cases be expanded, but so will the value for each use case. For remote diagnostics, 5G’s enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) can allow for a video consultation between patients and doctors. South Korean operator KT started offering such 5G-based remote diagnostics in 1Q 2020 at the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, South Korea. In this facility, 5G allows pathologists to conduct on-site pathological data analysis by transferring pathological data and necessary materials (worth up to 4 GB of data each) during surgeries, which initially took 20 minutes of walking. For remote surgery, eMBB can transfer high-definition video to the surgeon, while Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) can ensure that there is no lag between the surgeon and the video footage and that the surgeon can receive haptic feedback in real time. China Mobile showcased such an application in 1Q 2019 by conducting remote brain surgery on the brain of a patient in Beijing by a brain surgeon in Hainan 3,000 km away.

The healthcare sector is only beginning to understand the potential value of 5G. It is up to CSPs and healthcare providers to work together to realize the 5G healthcare value proposition by first engaging in early pilot tests for applications. While it will take some time for 5G coverage to be extensive, thus allowing the healthcare sector to derive the full value of 5G, CSPs can begin trialing low-risk applications that do not require city-wide coverage yet, such as medical staff training through HD video livestreams or Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR), followed by connecting multiple patients’ sensor data through 5G’s massive Machine-Type Communication (mMTC). While 5G is still underway, CSPs should look to providing private LTE to healthcare providers by framing it as a steppingstone to private 5G. By enabling private cellular functionality for healthcare providers, CSPs can already begin embedding themselves in the value chain and work alongside healthcare providers, realizing early wireless-enabled applications and gearing the industry up for the forthcoming 5G.