At Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA) in Texas, the Air Force is testing 5G capabilities that could be the future of medicine, reported Federal News Network. The advances aim to enable doctors, via telemedicine, to monitor and interact with patients like never before.
According to Jody Little, executive program manager for 5G NextGen at JBSA, “5G promises significant improvement in the ability for the Defense Department to support critical care at the point of care,” providing “more care in real-time.” Doctors will also be able to serve patients and interact with other healthcare professionals from anywhere in the world, reported Federal News Network.
Little likened 5G telemedical applications to gaming. “Whether that’s a virtual reality application or augmented reality application…it’ll be in real-time when interacting with the patients.”
With any new advancement comes challenges, especially related to cybersecurity. Little noted that patient security is of utmost importance, and the Department of Defense (DoD) is going beyond traditional security measures to protect it.
“The international body that manages the 5G standards has some very good 5G security standards,” Little told the Federal News Network. “From a DoD perspective, we need more, and we need better in some cases. Our perspectives run from the user equipment all the way back to the cloud or from the cloud all the way up to the user equipment. The whole capability from end-to-end needs to operate in a secure zero trust architecture.”
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