Healthcare and surgery to be transformed by 5G

A recent partnership between Vodafone and the Assert centre at University College Cork promises to change the paradigm of healthcare training, by making Assert the first 5G-connected telemedicine and medical robotics training centre in the world.

Vodafone Ireland is the first mobile operator in Ireland to launch commercial 5G, and the company says that the next generation network will not only provide faster speeds for customers but will also have a huge impact on technology use in nearly every industry across Ireland.

“The Assert centre was created in UCC to look at the research end of how we train doctors and healthcare professionals in the future. I was appointed director there about three years ago,” says Prof Barry O’Reilly, who also works as an obstetrician-gynaecologist at Cork University Maternity Hospital.

The Assert centre serves as a high-tech training ground for medical students, and features a series of immersive suits which can simulate real world situations, from roadside traffic accidents, to emergency rooms and operating theatres.

“There are three key areas that I see the introduction of 5G having a big impact,” he says. “The first is in the area of robotic surgery. I’ve been involved heavily in robotic surgery for the last 11 years. We were the first hospital to have a DaVinci robot in the publicly funded system in Ireland, and I performed the first robotic hysterectomy in the British Isles. Since then we’ve been at the cutting edge of robotic surgery.”

‘Latency time’

“Robotic surgery can allow for incredible precision, but at the moment the surgeon has to be in the same room,” he explains. “I see the future being very much about distance surgery, but what’s hampered that is connectivity issues. That’s where 5G and future iterations will have an impact, when we can get to a stage where the latency time is so small that you could have surgery done over great distances.”

“So you can imagine if there is a sick child in Ireland, who needs a type of surgical intervention that is not done very often here. Instead of them travelling to a huge cancer centre like Sloan Kettering in the US for the procedure, they could potentially be operated on in Dublin by a surgeon based in Sloan Kettering.”

Another key area that O’Reilly is excited about is the use of point-of-care systems. “At the moment there are commercially available products like Pocus, which stands for point of care ultrasound,” he says. “With the traditional ultrasound set-up, you have a probe and you also have the big machine to view the results. Pocus systems just take the data from the probe and can collect that for analysis through a phone or tablet. But what I find intriguing is the potential of these devices with a 5G connectivity option, because then what you’re looking at is a real game-changer.”

Wearable technology

“This technology also has huge significance for the developing world,” says O’Reilly. “Once you introduce 5G to that market, you could have a midwife in Kenya working in a remote village who can do a scan of a pregnant woman, and immediately get instant feedback from an expert back at the university teaching hospital.”

“The third area is in the wearable technology market,” says O’Reilly. “As the technology develops and connectivity systems improve, I think they will create a different care model for patients. If we look at the area of antenatal care, probably 70 per cent of the patients in a clinic are what we would consider low-risk. With wearable technologies, you could potentially measure things like blood pressure, check urine analysis and check baby movements from home.”

“The model is equally applicable in caring for chronic illnesses at home,” he says. “With these things we are just scratching the surface. I think there’s huge potential in the future, especially as connectivity improves through 5G. I think the bottom line is that we need to work better with all different types of industry in terms of the future of healthcare.”