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2019 ITU Kaleidoscope Academic Conference
[1]. All these characteristics match the requirements of 5G-assisted health systems is a more realistic choice. In
ICT-assisted health systems perfectly. In 5G, massive literature, the ICT-assisted health systems have been
multi-input multi-output (MIMO) [6], non-orthogonal discussed a lot. However, due to the current restrictions
multiple access (NOMA) [7], and full duplex (FD) are of latency, transmission speed and number of connected
emerging technologies for these claimed targets. devices, the telemedicine services are inefficient.
The 5G and beyond wireless technologies provide The 5G-enabled health systems, on the contrary, can
perfect solutions to ICT-assisted health systems, which solve these problems. The most promising technologies
inspires 5G-enabled health systems. For example, with of 5G being applied to the health systems is the URLLC.
the help of ultra-reliable low latency communications Additionally, the massive machine type communications
(URLLC), a 5G-enabled ambulance can provide remote (mMTC) and enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB)
diagnosis and operation. 5G-enabled ambulance can characteristics can further improve the experience of
also automatically respond to an emergency call and ICT-assisted health systems [7, 8]. As is known
plan an optimal route in advance to save precious rescue to all, compared to the fourth generation wireless
time. Besides, URLLC is also a critical issue for remote communications (4G), 5G aims to offer less than 1 ms
surgery. Otherwise, the wound area will be big and latency, more than 20 billion connected devices and up
might cause some risks to the patient’s life. 5G’s large to 1 Gb/s experienced transmission speed. All these
volume real-time medical image transmission also makes features make remote diagnosis and treatment a reality.
remote expert consultation a reality. Moreover, in
general and specialist hospitals, patients or their escorts
2.1 5G-enabled remote diagnosis and
need to press the widely used emergency call-buttons to
treatment
call the medical staff whenever an emergency happens.
It is time-consuming and might even waste precious
Telemedicine
rescue time. The 5G-enabled monitoring systems, on vehicle
Remote diagnose
the other hand, can reduce the consumed time and
save the patient’s life especially in emergency conditions. Remote treatment
The 5G-enabled monitoring systems can also provide
remote ward-round and real-time vital signs monitoring
services. Remote operation
Remote diagnose Community clinic
In this study, we first discuss the solutions and introduce and district hospital
the demonstrations of our 5G-enabled health systems, Remote consulation
5G network
i.e., 5G-enabled remote diagnosis and treatment, Remote treatment
5G-enabled remote surgery and 5G-enabled smart Digital database
monitoring. Based on these works, we discuss the
challenging issues and potential future research trends Remote operation Speciality and
on implementing 5G-enabled health systems. The rest general hospital
of this paper is organized as follows: we introduce the
demonstration of 5G-enabled health systems in section
Figure 1 – 5G-enabled health systems for remote areas.
2. The challenging issues on achieving the 5G-enabled
health systems are discussed in section 3. Section 4 5G-enabled remote diagnosis and treatment is first
is the future research trends. We finally conclude this discussed. As demonstrated in Figure 1, with 5G
paper in section 5. network’s help, we can offer better service for remote
diagnosis and treatment to residents in remote areas.
2. SOLUTIONS OF 5G-ENABLED HEALTH We can also offer remote operations with 5G URLLC?s
SYSTEMS less than 1 ms latency. On the other hand, the
district hospital and the general hospitals can mutually
The specific demonstrations and implementations of share the digital medical information. The automatic
5G-enabled health systems in the first affiliated hospital ambulance vehicles can respond to emergency calls
of Zhengzhou University (FAHZZU) will be discussed and provide in-vehicle remote diagnosis and treatment
in this section. We categorize the 5G-enabled health services with wireless connections to the hospitals.
systems into three 5G-enabled remote diagnosis and Figure 2 demonstrates remote diagnosis in FAHZZU.
treatment, 5G-enabled remote surgery, and 5G-enabled The remote community clinic is connected with
smart monitoring. FAHZZU via 5G wireless networks. In this case, the
As mentioned before, currently there are less people remote community clinic can share the high-quality
living in remote areas as more people move to the big medical resources from FAHZZU. According to our
cities. In addition, most of the people living in remote test, by leveraging the 5G’s fast transmission speed,
areas are the elderly and the young that urgently need the high-definition 1080P consultation video was
the high-quality medical services. In order to eliminate successfully transmitted. In our test, the downlink peak
the difference between big cities and remote areas, speed is about 1 Gb/s, 15 times that of the 4G wireless
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