Page 21 - ITU KALEIDOSCOPE, ATLANTA 2019

5G-ENABLED HEALTH SYSTEMS: SOLUTIONS, CHALLENGES AND
FUTURE RESEARCH TRENDS

7
1
2
7
1
Di Zhang ; Teng Zhang ; Yunkai Zhai 3,4 ; Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues 5,6 ; Dalong Zhang ; Zheng Wen ; Keping Yu ;
Takuro Sato 7
1
School of Information Engineering, Zhengzhou University
2
Interventional Operating Theater, the First Affiliated Hosital of Zhengzhou University
3 School of Management Engineering, Zhengzhou University
4 National Engineering Laboratory for Internet Medical Systems and Applications, China
5 Federal University of Piauí (UFPI), Brazil
6 Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal
7 Waseda University, Japan

ABSTRACT unrealistic to force medical doctors to move to remote
areas. It is also inhumane to force the people in remote
In the literature, Information communication technology areas to move to big cities. In this case, leveraging some
(ICT)-assisted health systems have been intensively technical methods will be a good choice, for instance,
discussed. However, it has seldom become a reality. Information communication technologies (ICT)-assisted
This is mainly due to the current wireless technologies’ health systems.
limited transmission rate, few connected devices and
In literature, ICT-assisted health systems is not a new
high latency. On the contrary, the fifth generation (5G)
topic. For example, the cloud computing paradigm for
wireless communications can connect more devices,
e-health and the leak risks of patient’s sensitive health
provide faster transmission rates and a lower latency.
information were discussed in [3]. The conclusion from
In this article, we first introduce the 5G-enabled health
this study is that the precautions must be taken into
systems and our specific implementation in the first
consideration before storing the sensitive data in the
affiliated hospital of Zhengzhou University (FAHZZU).
cloud. In the study of [4], authors reviewed the diffusion
Afterwards, the potential challenges and future research
of telemedicine and analyzed the factors influencing the
trends on demonstrating the 5G-enabled health systems
diffusion. It was found that going back to 2007, residents
are discussed.
and doctors in China living in remote areas mostly
had less knowledge about information technology (IT),
Keywords - 5G, health systems, smart hospital,
and they were unwilling to use telemedicine [4]. It
telemedicine
was thus hard for the implementation of telemedicine
at that time period. Authors suggested that a
1. INTRODUCTION
comprehensive force from both central government and
High-quality hospitals mostly locate in big cities, local government, and various methods not only limited
whereas the villages and remote areas lack such medical to education and scientific popularization, were needed.
institutions. The rapid siphon effect of big cities makes On the other hand, authors in [5] demonstrated the
the remote area’s health conditions even worse. With real-time off-the-shelf integrated telemedicine devices
technology advancing, the digital division between big for emergency medical cases in Germany.
cities and remote areas is getting bigger. The young and Nowadays since ICT technologies have been widely
middle-aged people can move to big cities, but it is hard used, people has more positive attitude to telemedicine.
for the elderly, ill and disabled people to do this. However, wireless connections of existing ICT-assisted
On the other hand, for the digital-technology health systems are based on the previous wireless
development such as fifth generation (5G) Internet of technologies (for instance, long term evolution (LTE)
things (IoT) [1] [2], most of our attention is confined and Wi-Fi). Limited connected device number, lower
to the big cities, and our effect is to deliver a faster transmission rate and higher latency may be risky
transmission speed, better cellular coverage and larger issues for the implementation of ICT-assisted health
number of connected devices for these dense area. Less systems. On the other hand, as fifth generation (5G)
attention has been paid to the remote areas. This is and beyond has claimed, compared to LTE systems, it
mainly due to its less potential revenue compared to can connect more than 1000 times of the number of
the potential revenue for more dense areas. It is the devices, support more than 1000 times of the devices,
society’s responsibility to provide people in remote areas support more than 100 times the traffic volumes and
with better health services. However, it is unfair and provide 1 out of 10 latency performance (less than 1 ms)

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