No longer a trend, smartwatches and fitness devices have clearly captivated and dominated today’s society. Men, women, children and even animals wear some form or fashion of smart technology. With the advent of 5G upon us, however, wearable technology is about to deliver use cases beyond the imagination.
According to a recent press release published by Verizon, the primary benefit of 5G connectivity for wearables will be enhanced performance and interactivity provided by mobile edge computing, or MEC.
“MEC allows complex functions to be performed closer to the user, and away from decentralized servers, which reduces network latency and enables near-real time execution.”
Ultra-low latency is the performance byproduct of Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband, which provides the ability to collect and process data in near-real time. The potential for more accurate and “connectivity-intensive tasks” takes health and wellness, productivity, communication, and safety to a whole new level.
On the horizon, readers can expect to see a tremendous impact on the healthcare industry as health trackers gather “clinical-grade patient data” and help doctors provide a diagnosis. According to a McKinsey & Company report, “if 15- to 20 percent of current outpatient consultations and home health visits were to occur electronically, annual healthcare spending could be cut by $25 billion to $40 billion.”
Connecting people with their surroundings – communities, city streets, and homes – 5G will connect people with their environment to provide a more intuitive and increasingly personalized experience.
“The network is critical for moving raw data from infrastructure to the cloud and then sending metadata back again,” says Sean Harrington, vice president of City Solutions at Verizon. “As bandwidth demands and the need for time-critical responses increases, 5G becomes extraordinarily important.”
The wearable device market is expected to nearly quadruple by 2022, to 430 million units.
January 6, 2020
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