The healthcare industry is often described as more of a technology laggard than a leader in IT modernization, but when it comes to AI, healthcare is at the forefront. The Food and Drug Administration has already authorized 882 AI/Machine Learning-enabled medical devices for use cases including patient monitoring, image analysis, and diagnostics.
Long before ChatGPT entered the public consciousness, The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) published a paper entitled “Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: The Hope, the Hype, the Promise, the Peril.” According to a recent Mayo Clinic article, NAM identified three potential benefits of AI in healthcare: improving outcomes for both patients and clinical teams, lowering healthcare costs, and benefitting population health.
The wireless industry has a potential role to play in helping healthcare providers achieve all of these benefits from AI. Even though the 5G-enabled robotic surgeries some pundits were predicting a few years ago have not become standard operating procedure, 5G may still have a big contribution to make to AI in healthcare.
Physicians use AI to analyze patient data in order to predict healthcare issues for individuals, help clinicians work more efficiently, and identify trends within larger populations. Right now most of this data is gathered from patients while they are in a care facility, but doctors want to know more about how people fare once they leave the hospital. They also want to know what is going on before people get sick enough to present at a doctor’s office or hospital.
“Technologies with 5G in wearables and healthcare can intensely reduce the cost of diagnosing and preventing diseases and saving patient lives,” according to a National Institutes of Health research paper published last year by a group of biomedical and electrical engineers. The paper focused on wearable sensors connected to 5G smartphones which transmit data to servers. “Artificial intelligence is used to continuously forecast a patient’s state and determine whether or not the patient needs medical intervention,” the researchers explained.
If smartphones can control wearable devices, the low latency of 5G networks creates the possibility of real-time intervention to address acute issues. This is already starting in the diabetes care arena, where the FDA has approved a smartphone app that patients can use to control wearable insulin pumps. It’s not hard to imagine the next step: an AI-generated alert on a patient’s smartphone, telling that person to take action.
5G RedCap will make it possible for more wearable medical devices to directly support 5G connectivity. RedCap is a reduced set of 5G capabilities intended for devices that have lower battery consumption and bandwidth requirements than smartphones. Ericsson recently published a paper on RedCap, and smartwatches and wearable medical devices were the first two use cases listed by the vendor.
The use of 5G networks to quickly and securely transmit health data may ultimately prove more significant than hospital private networks, another healthcare use case for 5G. Several high-profile hospitals have invested in private cellular networks, but others are relying on WIFi 6, which offers more bandwidth and security than previous generations. But WiFi 6 can’t compete with 5G when it comes to mobility.
“WiFi 6 will be the preferred choice for indoor networks such as those at hospitals, while 5G will be used in the field to solve medical challenges,” according to a recent report on healthcare connectivity from Canadian systems integrator Activo. Solving those medical challenges will almost certainly involve AI. At both the individual patient level and the population level, AI will analyze data and identify patterns that will lead to better health outcomes.
By Martha DeGrasse, Inside Towers Contributing Analyst
This article represents the opinions of veteran telecom industry editor and journalist Martha DeGrasse, an Inside Towers Contributing Analyst with features appearing monthly. DeGrasse owns Network Builder Reports and contributes regularly to several publications. She was formerly a writer and editor with RCR Wireless and a TV business news producer.
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