Four Ways 5G Will Improve Healthcare in India

At 27.2% of the total population, India has one of the world's youngest populations. These enterprising young people, of which you are a part, are slowly but effectively transforming the country's economy and polity. 

But, as is the case with any advancing economy, certain areas still need to keep pace with the development of the rest of the country. Healthcare in India is one such domain which has yet to realise its potential to save lives. 

The abject state of the Indian healthcare system was laid bare during the corona pandemic. A system stretched to its limits couldn't address the ever-increasing need for healthcare professionals. 

These are the ways 5G will empower the Indian healthcare industry.

The Current State of Healthcare in India

In India, there is one doctor for every 750 citizens, which is better than the standards set by the WHO. But, there is a problem with the distribution of these doctors. 

According to the Rural Health Statistics released by the Government of India in 2021, the Primary Health Centres in India faced a physician shortfall of 7%, while Community Health Centres saw a shortfall of 57%. 

India is still predominantly an agrarian or rural economy, with 64.61% of her one billion people clustered around rural villages and towns. But only 27% of doctors and 33% of healthcare workers (nurses, pharmacists, medical technicians, etc.) help India's rural population. 

There are multiple reasons behind these abysmal numbers. 

1. Private practices or hospitals in India account for 70% of the total healthcare market. 
2. The concentration of medical colleges in urban population centres. 
3. Administrative bottlenecks that lead to the ineffective allocation of healthcare resources. 
4. Lack of trust in government-run hospitals paved the way for the notion that private practices provide better healthcare.

5G Properties That Advance Healthcare Services

5G is the fifth generation of broadband wireless network technology. Designed and developed by the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP), 5G constitutes a fundamental change in communication. 5G uses millimetre waves (hereafter denoted as mmWaves) to transmit data. mmWaves are high-energy radio waves with increased bandwidth and enhanced speed that offer services with low latency. 

5G significantly reduces the energy required to send a data packet to a user thanks to a property known as bean forming. Where the antennae can focus the direction of the 5G waves, this property not only reduces the energy required to send data between the sender and the receiver but also reduces the inherent latency that is a part of wireless communication. 

Slicing is a property of 5G where the bandwidth gets appropriated based on user requirements. For example, slicing allows the signal from a doctor at a Rural Health Centre to use the same bandwidth as a healthcare service or transfer large data files (x-ray reports, CT scans, etc.) A single connection can sustain data packets between multiple users thanks to the larger bandwidth of mmWaves.

What Does 5G Mean for Healthcare?

The mushrooming of 5G networks in India will have a pronounced impact on the delivery of healthcare services in India. 5G services will help siphon off talent from the current urban agglomeration of doctors. 

These are the ways 5 G's implementation will lead to an evolution of the healthcare service industry in India. 

Intelligent Wearables

In 2021, the market size of wearables globally was USD 52.14 billion, and this expanding market will grow at a rate of 14.9% in the next eight years alone. The North American continent might be the largest market for wearables currently. The South-East Asian economies, which have seen the adoption of cutting-edge technologies, are the fastest growing market. 

Wearables had a relatively innocuous start. GPS-enabled watches with an inbuilt gyroscope could track the user's movement and help the user calculate the calories burned. 

But with 5G, wearables can truly start to show their potential. 

Consider this:

There is a person A whose family history exhibits a pattern of heart attacks after the age of 50. Until now, the only way to truly detect a heart attack was to experience one, and with a survival rate of just 5%, it is safe to call that a no-go. 

But suppose these individuals had a wearable tracking their vital signs on a real-time basis feeding this information to a machine learning algorithm trained to notice changes in the individual's biometrics. Creating an opportunity to save these patients before accumulated stress led to a fatal situation. 

A good wearable device does not impede the daily activities of the user. The low power requirements for a 5G device reduce the weight of the wearable. A single microcontroller can accommodate the biometric sensor (in the case of a heart monitor, this will be an EKG sensor), the GPS sensor, and a signal converter. 

Deep learning algorithms will benefit from wider 5G-enabled devices and service networks. A 5G-enabled wearable device will leverage instant low-latency connectivity and high bandwidth data transfer capability. An example is the Caretaker 4 medical device, which monitors a patient's blood pressure and heart rate. 

Advancing Telemedicine

In India, a doctor spends an average of two minutes with every patient. When going to the hospital during the corona pandemic became akin to playing with live ammunition, there was an unlikely saviour for both; the doctors and the patients. And the technology which helped physicians connect with their patients during that trying time was — Telemedicine. 

Telemedicine uses the telecommunication medium to provide medical assistance. During the pandemic, this sector witnessed a growth of 771% compared to the preceding years. The pandemic also witnessed a 350% increase in late-night telemedicine consultations. 

As mentioned earlier in this article, rural communities are home to nearly two-thirds of India's population. The inaccessibility of quality primary healthcare in rural India affects the economic and social well-being of the country. 

The deployment of 5G services across the country will enable rural patients to connect with their primary healthcare providers from across the country. This will reduce the burden on successive health centres in the system and the economic burden saddled by the majority of India's agrarian populace. 

The Indian government has already deployed a network of nationally integrated services like; the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP), National Cancer Network (ONCONET), and Arogyasree. The national deployment of 5G services will improve the ability of these integrated services to serve and help the citizens of India.

Reducing the Distance

In 2019, a news article from the People's Republic of China caught the international media's attention. Ling Zhipei, the chief physician at the Neurosurgery Department of People's Liberation Army General Hospital, conducted brain surgery on a patient who has Parkinson's disease. 

What made this one particular surgery newsworthy was the small fact that Dr Ling was 3,000 km away when conducting the surgery. 

Distance is no longer a factor in accessing and providing quality healthcare. The low latency and high bandwidth capabilities of a 5G NR network open the door for new advances in medical technology. In the near future, citizens from India's rural interior will access the same quality of healthcare available to citizens living in her cities. 

5G networks will also open new possibilities in after-treatment patient care. As mentioned, patients can use wearables that track their condition every second. The wider adoption of 5G technology will also facilitate the growth of delivery drones to help with last-mile connectivity and to improve access to medical devices and treatments. 

This idealistic future will consist of a fully automated warehouse serviced by a legion of small utility drones that will reduce patients' need to procure their prescribed medication personally. 

The network slicing attribute of 5G allows network providers to allocate resources (bandwidth, speed, and latency) efficiently. When time equates to life, getting priority in a network is essential. In 2019, there were 4.1 lakh road accidents, of which 1.5 lakh were fatal injuries. 

Ambulances are one of the most basic civil infrastructures that define modern society. But so are roadblocks that stop the free flow of traffic and hinder the movement of ambulances. In a 5G-enabled world, ambulance operators can connect with doctors at the target hospital and administer first aid that can save a life. Explained below are some of the ways doctors can assist primary healthcare workers.

Extending Training and Beyond

India has a healthcare problem. By official estimates, the country requires no less than 4.3 million nurses before 2024 to meet the WHO standards. The World Health Organization states that there must be three nurses for every 1,000 people. In India, however, this rate is still at 1.7 nurses per 1,000 people. And this number is not considering the need for pharmacists and medical device technicians. India requires a massive investment in healthcare educational facilities to meet its responsibility as a global economic powerhouse. 

The easiest way to solve this problem would be to train more professionals. Even though there are 380 medical colleges in India (the world's largest), there are only a finite number of seats available yearly. Therefore, to scale up the number of healthcare professionals, India would have to construct ten times the number of medical colleges. 

Thanks to the construction of the 5G network, India can massively scale up its training programs. The increased bandwidth of 5G networks, with down rates of 1Gbps and above, can revolutionise healthcare education in India. 

Students from the country's interior will be able to listen to real-time lectures conducted by doyens at the highest learning centres in the land. Of course, that's only scratching the surface of the transformational ability of 5G. 

Students can wear a simple 3D headset and view patient files in a simulated 3D environment. They will be able to interact and study the various organs and discover the intricate mechanisms of the human body. 

5G can enable the development of virtual reality environments where healthcare professionals practice their skills. Students can wear haptic sensors to get feedback based on their movements.

The future of healthcare and 5G

The proper implementation of 5G technology can uplift scores of people and create a marketplace for the propagation of new ideas. In the future, a doctor can talk to a patient and diagnose them in a virtual space. It will also become possible for students to learn and train in advanced medical practises without leaving their towns or villages. 

The number of fatalities connected to heart attacks and strokes will plummet due to near-constant coverage by wearables connected to an evolving deep-learning algorithm. 

This tree of connected wearables and healthcare professionals will help create a holistic treatment plan for patients and reduce the time for a complete recovery. 

But to effectively create a working 5G network, we require capable engineers trained in advanced industry tools. These engineers should be able to ideate new projects and have the engineering insight to realise and deploy this new technology. 

We partnered with industry experts at Skill-Lync to design our 5G telecom program. Our program will help students learn cutting-edge tools while practising on industry-relevant projects. These projects are simulations of real-world problems and help the student understand the skillsets required to succeed in the 5G telecom space. Talk to our career consultant to know how you can effect a change in the Indian healthcare space.