5G in Medical Treatment

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) will also have a huge impact on the delivery of medical treatment  — both in supporting and guiding medical professionals to collaborate and deliver treatments, and in the delivery of treatment itself. The NHS recognises digital therapeutics as both an efficient and effective way of treating patients, particularly in mental health. Scientific studies have shown that VR in particular, set to be a huge beneficiary of 5G, has the power to reduce anxiety. With the speeds and range offered by the new generation of 5G networks, secondary care, for the treatment of mental and physical health conditions, can become available remotely. 

What’s more, 5G networks are essential to the provision of remote services. Remote medication adherence can help people maintain their independence with less direct support from social services, and maximise the efficacy of their drug regimes, while continuous monitoring in hospitals, care homes and peoples’ homes enables earlier detection and resolution of issues before they become emergencies, helping to safeguard individuals and promote general wellbeing. Surgery too could be transformed, with better informed surgeons and even the potential for remote robotic surgery. Nearly half (48 percent) of consumers feel that remote robotic surgery would be acceptable, yet sixty-one percent believe such procedures are risky as they rely on the internet. But 5G, with its scope for network slicing and private networks, can offer unprecedented reliability.  

With advanced connectivity solutions, including 5G, medical treatment can start to shift from reactive to preventative, out of clinics and into communities; offering better outcomes for patients and cost efficiencies for the sector.

Chicago-based Rush University Medical Center has deployed 5G and mobile edge computing to deliver a connected hospital experience to their patients. Sensors are available throughout the hospital, including patient rooms and soon, there will be a roll out of connected blood pressure cuffs.  

"We strongly believe 5G is a game-changing technology that when fully implemented will help us support better hospital operations as well as provide the highest quality patient and staff experience." 

said Dr. Shafiq Rab, senior vice president and chief information officer, Rush University Medical Center and the Rush System for Health.

In the Samsung Medical Center in North Korea, 5G is enabling an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered inpatient care platform that monitors factors including air quality and the patient’s condition. Sleep quality to facial expressions is monitored, with AI analysis enabling early detection of issues and alerting of staff as appropriate.

The Liverpool 5G Health & Social Care project explored the potential of 5G to support medication adherence through the deployment of PAMAN, a remote monitoring system with a simple video audio device. After a medication review with a clinical pharmacist, over 30 users were provided with a device in their home that connected to the PAMAN monitoring centre with a simple button. This enabled pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to observe patients in their homes taking their medication; the team can also answer any questions the user has, liaise with pharmacies and GPs on their behalf, and facilitate repeat prescriptions. 5G provides a reliable, consistent connection and enables ultra high definition video. The results of the trial were striking: with medication adherence levels rising to 95 percent (compared to the 55 percent national average), a 51 percent drop in the number of service users who had a medication error, 50 percent reduction in medication costs through reduced wastage, and a significant reduction in carer hours needed to provide medication administration support. Importantly, the quality of life for users also significantly improved with a 73 percent increase in those feeling confident and happy to take medication, 53 percent in those who felt safe and 40% increase in feelings of independence. These considerable benefits combine to deliver a potential cost saving to health and social care services of £208,800 per 100 users per year.

Liverpool also deployed Care Portal to patients to use in their homes. The device, which is used by the patient, includes a built-in ECG monitor and connects to a Telehealth Hub staffed by nurses and healthcare assistants. This real-time monitoring provides clinicians with more data, helping to identify problems before they become emergencies, reduce district nurse visits and enable people to stay in their homes for longer.

Additionally, the project used 5G to deploy a pressure ulcer management system: Artificial Intelligence (AI) imaging techniques and emerging camera technologies are used to categorise pressure ulcers remotely and send high-quality images to practitioners for diagnosis.

WM5G has partnered with Tekihealth to explore how 5G can support the provision of GP care in care homes via the use of connected diagnostics tools. In 2020, five residential care homes across the West Midlands set out to trial the Teki-Hub, a connected diagnostics kit that allows GPs to conduct full patient check ups and remote ward rounds. Thanks to the high bandwidth and low latency of the 5G networks, the care solution can move far beyond the capacities of a standard video consultations, allowing the GP to assess and record clinical information in real-time via the device to a degree as accurate as an in-person check-up.

The device used in the trial provides high resolution photography, video and readings from a thermometer or otoscope (a medical device used to look into the ear), as well as portable ECG and spirometry. This makes it possible for patients to receive a full examination and GPs to record the patient’s clinical information in real-time from the device operated by the care home staff. The contact-free solution supported care home staff in safeguarding residents, limiting the Covid-19 infection risk, while maintaining high standards of care and continuous access and assistance of GPs. It also frees up valuable travel time allowing the doctors to treat more patients both at the care homes and back at their surgery.

Due to its effectiveness in the five trial locations, local health leaders are exploring ways for the solution to be scaled to more than 1,000 care homes in the region. 5G will also provide a natural and complementary extension to the remote vital signs tracking initiatives currently funded by the NHS.

Operating rurally where the counties of Shropshire and Worcestershire meet, the West Mercia Rural 5G project looked at how 5G can help health and social care provision in rural settings. Using 5G connectivity, the project tested the ability for district nurse practitioners and doctors to conduct a virtual walk around in a care home. Such services can have a disproportionate impact in remote areas, where the travelling time for district nurse practitioners and doctors to conduct care home or house visits can be far greater than in an urban setting.

A variety of solutions already exist to monitor those suffering from chronic illnesses. For example, home glucose monitoring is essential to the management of diabetes and the prevention of complications. Diabetacare trialled a new blood sugar level device with remote monitoring capability across 800 patients in Bangalore, India. Working in tandem with eight day clinics in the city, the devices provided regular monitoring along with personalised treatment schedules; specially trained nurses monitored the daily data and  diabetes doctors reviewed progress and dealt with emergencies. The trial has been successfully deployed without 5G but since 100 million people suffer from diabetes in India, 5G’s capacity to scale to a far greater density and enable ubiquitous secure connectivity is crucial.

Centralised patient data will help the development of cohesive treatment plans that support the patient’s full needs. Additionally, tools such as Visionable — the first video collaboration platform designed specifically for medical teams — offer the ability for medical experts from different fields to securely meet and collaborate online to agree a joint treatment plan. With 5G and other advanced connectivity solutions, it becomes far easier to exchange high definition clinical-grade images such as X-rays or MRI scans, in real-time, enabling faster diagnosis and collaborative decision making. 

In Greece, the Vodafone Foundation Telemedicine Programme is using mobile technology combined with next generation medical devices to provide high-quality specialised healthcare, regardless of location. By way of tablets and medical equipment, GPs and rural doctors are able to transfer their examinations to medical specialists for their expert opinion, granting greater access to secondary care for those in remote and rural locations. The programme is implemented in 100 remote areas, covering a population of 500,000 people. Results show an increase in patient engagement and adherence, as well as improved continuity and completeness of care with the ability to identify issues more quickly: around 75% of patients reported a reduction in the number of hospital visits they needed. 

Secondary care is typically conducted in hospitals or clinics — but at-home treatment is possible with 5G. This reduces costs for the sector and can help to reduce waiting times, increasing patient engagement due to convenience. Currently, around 5% of healthcare appointments in the UK are missed, many of which are not reallocated: reliable virtual applications should reduce this figure, increasing patient turnover. 

At the Hospital de la Princesa in Madrid, 5G enabled at-home rehabilitation for multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Virtual reality glasses allow patients to work in groups in virtual rooms that emulate video games, thanks to a collaboration between Telefonica, Roche and La Frontera VR laboratories.

Closer to home, the West Mercia Rural 5G project developed an augmented reality solution to enable remote musculoskeletal clinics and remote physio sessions delivered by community physiotherapists. The solution used the lidar technology within an iPhone 12 Pro Max to provide a real-time (or recorded) augmented reality visualisation of a patient’s body movement and gait. The iPhone was used to collect 3D biometric data and 5G-enabled access to realtime body-pose identification and derived analysis. This then used the VRSS cloud solution to provide the data as an avatar to the physio through the use of the app on an iPad. Such a service can provide a visual record of patient progress, enable the physio to see that the patient is following the requested limb movements, save money and inconvenience, but most importantly, allows the physio to have evidence of patients keeping up their physio routines. 
 

Working with the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, WM5G conducted the UK’s first demonstration of a remote-controlled ultrasound scan over a public 5G network. The demonstration simulated a paramedic performing an ultrasound scan on a patient, under the remote guidance of a clinician who was able to interpret the ultrasound image in real-time. The ultrasound sensor was manipulated locally by the paramedic under the remote direction of the clinician, who used a joystick to send control signals over the live 5G network to a robotic or ‘haptic’ glove. This created small vibrations to direct the paramedic’s hand, allowing the clinician to remotely control the sensor position and see the ultrasound images in real time. 
Enabling ultrasound scans to be performed by paramedics with remote live diagnosis can bring a number of advantages to both patients and the NHS. In addition to speeding up diagnosis, the technology could reduce the number of ambulance journeys and hospital visits, freeing up resources. Crucially, scans performed in the field can enable faster diagnoses, ensuring more effective outcomes for the patient and increasing overall efficiency for the hospital.

Tim Jones, Chief Innovation Officer at UHB, said:

"We are immensely excited about the potential of 5G to support transformation in healthcare. Our clinicians will in the future be able to deliver holistic specialist advice in real time, potentially formaing virtual multi-disciplinary teams to provide the best patient care using intelligent IT links. Information would be accessible at the point of need, ensuring informed decision making leading too improved patient safety, quality of care and patient/clinician experience."

Similarly, the Vodafone 5G Milan and the 5G Barcelona projects are exploring connected ambulance solutions. 5G connectivity and the latest medical technologies enable staff to be able to share a patient’s vitals and symptoms in real-time with the hospital, as well as access patient medical records in real-time. High-resolution video calling between the ambulance and hospital gives doctors a better understanding of the situation. The patient’s condition can therefore be monitored remotely and treatment can start immediately, where necessary. Ultimately, 5G’s low latency and high bandwidth could be the difference between life and death. 

"Neurologists in the hospital, for example, might ask a patient who has had a stroke to move their arm. If there's a lag on the video call, the neurologist can't really understand if it's the technology or if the patient has been impacted by the stroke".

said Juljana Hysenbelli, 5G Sector Lead for Health and Wellness, Vodafone Italy.

For the Barcelona project, connected cameras have been installed on the outside of ambulances to provide real-time feeds of complex situations such as terrorist attacks or natural emergencies. Insights can help hospitals prepare more effectively for mass casualty incidents. The project also recognises that the first responder to an incident may not be medically trained at all: ‘5G First Responders’ aims to improve care administered in the first moments of medical emergencies, a key time to save lives and prevent serious injuries. During a pilot test, a policeman attended a medical emergency in the street by connecting in real-time with a doctor located in Parc Taulí hospital in Sabadell. The connection between the policeman and the paediatrician was made via a RealWear HMT device which fits on the head and allows for sharing of high-quality video. Significantly, it is voice-operated, which leaves the wearer’s hands free to help the patient.   

The device initiates a video call, with the remote physician able to see through the agent’s eyes and provide immediate assistance. This also allows for the sharing of graphical information, including data represented on maps and annotations about the images the officer is sending.  

But the case for remote assistance does not end when the patient reaches the hospital. The Castilla-la Mancha project in Spain is using 5G powered augmented reality to provide remote specialist support to emergency unit doctors. A number of hospitals across the globe are likewise exploring the value of remote assistance during surgeries; the Quirónsalud Málaga Hospital in Spain demonstrated the ability for 5G to deliver expert remote assistance to surgeries and the integration of medical data through augmented reality. Dr Pedro Rosón performed the surgeries in Málaga with real-time assistance from Dr Katsumi Yamamoto in Japan, made possible by 5G’s low latency and high video transmission. Augmented reality technology was used to provide essential information about the operation, allowing doctors and assistants to interact.

Similar demonstrations have been conducted by the 5G Barcelona project and closer to home by the University Hospital of Wales and University Hospital Llandough in cancer care. 5G is being used to allow clinicians and surgeons to ‘scrub in’ to any operating room or catheterisation (cath) lab virtually from anywhere in the world for remote assisted support via augmented reality.

Professor Jared Torkington, Clinical Lead for Bowel Cancer in Wales, said:

"We live in an unprecented time of new surgical innovations with new technologies. In times of Covid-19, using this augumented reality-based platform will enable remote support and consultation in real-time from potentiallu amywhere in the world and enhance training opportunities, all while helping us to minimise the number of people in our hospitals to facilitate social distancing."
 

Already, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Robots are assisting surgeons with microsurgery. For example, researchers at the Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands used an AI-assisted robot to suture microscopically small blood vessels (some as small as .03 millimetres across). The robot replicated the surgeon’s hand movements at a miniature scale, and AI was used to normalise those movements and prevent tremors or sudden motions from transferring to the surgical robot: the procedure was successful.

Patients in England having radiotherapy are likely to have part of their treatment performed with the aid of artificial intelligence after its use to help NHS clinicians was recommended for the first time. Draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has given approval to nine AI technologies for performing external beam radiotherapy in lung, prostate and colorectal cancers, in a move it believes could save radiographers hundreds of thousands of hours and help relieve the “severe pressure” on radiotherapy departments.

El.En is hoping to improve treatment options with their state of the art laser equipment — this will benefit a wide variety of areas including dermatology, dentistry, sports medicine and surgery. Improved connectivity will also benefit research efforts to develop lasers that allow physicians to treat patients with minimally invasive surgery. The project is now collaborating with Ericsson to explore how 5G can be used to render robotic laser surgery more precise, less expensive and have fewer side effects. 

"We can reduce the invasiveness of treatments by having more sophisticated software, devices and control of the system. For that to work, we need to have a very efficient way of exchanging information."

says Professor Leonardo Masotti, President of the Scientific Committee of the El.En group.

The potential for robots to assist in the operating theatre, more generally, is also being explored. At the Samsung Medical Center in South Korea, 5G-powered autonomous robots are being used for operating room assistance such as waste disposal and the carrying and delivery of instruments from the place of sterilisation to the operating rooms. 5G-enabled massive connectivity minimises disruption and latency in data exchange with robots and terminals. It is hoped the robots will help to reduce secondary and tertiary infections that occur through contact with medical waste, and save human resource costs in waste disposal. In Wuhan, during the height of the covid pandemic, autonomous robots were deployed on coronavirus wards to take temperatures, deliver meals and disinfect spaces. The robots helped to take the strain off stretched healthcare workers by performing basic tasks, as well as protecting healthcare workers by reducing their exposure to infected patients.  

Robots are also being used in hospitals to perform assistive roles. At the RCCS San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, the R1 robots help patients and visitors by providing useful information on the hospital and its services and facilities. R1 can also help patients hospitalised for longer periods by reading them a book, providing companionship, or taking their food order. With artificial intelligence, R1 can use this data — such as food preferences — to improve hospital processes and in this case, create better menus for their patients. The combination of artificial intelligence and 5G connectivity means R1 can read human body language and speech, and respond with minimal delay. 

Live-in robots could also be used to facilitate telemedicine to provide continuous critical care to patients. 

Filippo Cavallo - Assistant Professor at the BioRobotics Institute near Pisa - is working to make 5G support robots a reality;

"5G can enable us to implement complex healthcare services and improve the capability of robots to learn to recognise new objects and perform complex tasks. We can have robots to support in assisting elderly people, for example."

At the People’s Liberation Army Hospital in China, 5G has enabled remote surgery to be performed using robotic arms. In a landmark surgery, chief physician Ling Zhipei operated on the brain of a Parkinson’s disease patient in Beijing from the PLAGH Hainan Hospital 3,000km away.

The IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital in Milan also performed remote robotic surgery over 5G. The surgery was performed from the theatre stage of the Vodafone Village, where Professor Matteo Trimarchi carried out a procedure used to treat diseases affecting the vocal cords on a synthetic larynx model at the San Raffaele hospital. Thanks to the extremely low-latency and high degree of reliability provided by 5G, the surgeon was able to operate the laser and the robot’s micro-manipulator grippers remotely in real time, whilst watching what was happening via a stereoscopic video of the area being operated on.

Research into this field has also been conducted by Ericsson and King’s College London, who have explored the ability to conduct remote surgery via the tactile internet—helping the surgeon feel even closer to the patient. Using cutting-edge 5G network infrastructure in combination with the world's most advanced surgical robotics, the team at King's College has created the ability to allow the remote transfer of haptic, tactile, audio and visual technologies. A doctor uses specialised haptic feedback gloves and virtual reality equipment to operate on a patient via a robotic counterpart, potentially thousands of miles away. The gloves provide touch feedback from sensors on the robot arms, and the VR equipment places the surgeon in the same sensory environment as the patient.

Researchers from European Institute of Telesurgery used the ZEUS system, which is transcontinental, to attempt a remote robot-assisted laparoscopic cholecystectomy on a 68-year-old woman with a history of abdominal pain and cholelithiasis. The surgeon’s subsystem (Equant’s point of presence, New York) and patient’s subsystem (operating room in European Institute of Telesurgery, Strasbourg) were connected via a high-speed terrestrial network (i.e., ATM service), with a round-trip distance of over 14,000 km. Robot motion data had a high priority and a rate guarantee of 512 Kbps within the 10 Mbps virtual path. The operation was carried out successfully in 54 min, with a 155 ms mean time lag for transmission. The study estimated that 300 ms was the maximum time tolerable delay.

Working with the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, WM5G conducted the UK’s first demonstration of a remote-controlled ultrasound scan over a public 5G network. The demonstration simulated a paramedic performing an ultrasound scan on a patient, under the remote guidance of a clinician who was able to interpret the ultrasound image in real-time. The ultrasound sensor was manipulated locally by the paramedic under the remote direction of the clinician, who used a joystick to send control signals over the live 5G network to a robotic or ‘haptic’ glove. This created small vibrations to direct the paramedic’s hand, allowing the clinician to remotely control the sensor position and see the ultrasound images in real time. 

Enabling ultrasound scans to be performed by paramedics with remote live diagnosis can bring a number of advantages to both patients and the NHS. In addition to speeding up diagnosis, the technology could reduce the number of ambulance journeys and hospital visits, freeing up resources. Crucially, scans performed in the field can enable faster diagnoses, ensuring more effective outcomes for the patient and increasing overall efficiency for the hospital.

Tim Jones, Chief Innovation Officer at UHB, said;

"We are immensely excited about the potential of 5G to support treansformation in healthcare. Our clinicians will in the future be able to deliver holistic specialist advice in real time, potentially forming virtual multi-discilinary teams to provide the best patient care using intelligent IT links. Information would be accessible at th epoint of need, ensuring informed decision making leading to improved patient safety, quality of care and patient/clinician experience."

Elsewhere in the UK, O2 has partnered with Visionable⁠ and the East of England ambulance trust⁠ to explore how 5G could assist and help treat stroke patients more quickly and effectively. Ambulances were deployed with connected devices that enable smooth communication between paramedics and consultants via ultra high-definition video. This concept was initially tested at a 5G testbed in Millbrook, Bedfordshire.

Lynda Sibson, Stroke Telemedicine Manager East of England Stroke Telemdicine Stakeholder Partnership, said;

"When someone has a stroke, every minute counts. We have been successfully working with Visionable to bring critical stroke care to patients wherever they are, bringing life-saving treatment and dignosis to thousands of people across the East of England. Extending this type of care into Smart Ambulances is an exciting next step in critical and pre-hospital emergency care. Being able to bring experts to patients reagrdless of their location will help save lives, while reducing some of the strain on clinicians and the NHS."

Similarly, the Vodafone 5G Milan and the 5G Barcelona projects are exploring connected ambulance solutions. 5G connectivity and the latest medical technologies enable staff to be able to share a patient’s vitals and symptoms in real-time with the hospital, as well as access patient medical records in real-time. High-resolution video calling between the ambulance and hospital gives doctors a better understanding of the situation. The patient’s condition can therefore be monitored remotely and treatment can start immediately, where necessary. Ultimately, 5G’s low latency and high bandwidth could be the difference between life and death. 

"Neurologists in the hospital, for example, might ask a patient who has had a stroke to move their arm. If there's a lag on the video call, the neurologist can't really understand if it's the technology or if the patient has been impacted by the stroke".

said Juljana hysenbelli, 5G Sector Lead for Health and Wellness, Vodafone Italy.
 

For the Barcelona project, connected cameras have been installed on the outside of ambulances to provide real-time feeds of complex situations such as terrorist attacks or natural emergencies. Insights can help hospitals prepare more effectively for mass casualty incidents. The project also recognises that the first responder to an incident may not be medically trained at all: ‘5G First Responders’ aims to improve care administered in the first moments of medical emergencies, a key time to save lives and prevent serious injuries. During a pilot test, a policeman attended a medical emergency in the street by connecting in real-time with a doctor located in Parc Taulí hospital in Sabadell. The connection between the policeman and the paediatrician was made via a RealWear HMT device which fits on the head and allows for sharing of high-quality video. Significantly, it is voice-operated, which leaves the wearer’s hands free to help the patient.   

The device initiates a video call, with the remote physician able to see through the agent’s eyes and provide immediate assistance. This also allows for the sharing of graphical information, including data represented on maps and annotations about the images the officer is sending.  

In the isolated villages of Vanuatu, connectivity has reduced the number of maternal deaths. Abwatuntora Mauna Health Centre had no mobile networks or connectivity until a Kacific Community WiFi site was installed there in January 2021. Empowered by reliable and high-speed connectivity, Nurse Nicholas Bage delivered a complicated childbirth via video conferencing with a more experienced midwife at another clinic. If this occurred just a few months ago before the affordable Community WiFi was introduced there, the mother and new-born would not have survived.

Operating rurally where the counties of Shropshire and Worcestershire meet, the West Mercia Rural 5G project similarly looked at how 5G can help health and social care provision in rural settings. They explored how 5G can enable more rapid and appropriate treatment to be given but also hopefully more efficient use of NHS resources, reducing the number of ambulance call outs and hospital admissions.

Though, of course, transfer to hospital is sometimes the most appropriate course of action. 5G can help here too, ensuring patients receive the best possible care in a timely fashion: for example, the Castilla-la Mancha project in Spain is using 5G powered augmented reality to provide remote specialist support to emergency unit doctors.  

Working with the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital Trust, the Liverpool 5G Health & Social Care project delivered 5G connected VR headsets for palliative care. The headsets were used as distraction therapy to help manage patient pain. Patient feedback was overwhelmingly positive, reporting increased quality of life and some reduction in pain medication. The hospital sees applications for the tech beyond palliative care, supporting patients in critical care units with rehabilitation and ventilation weaning.

David Walliker, Chief Information Officer at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hopsitals NHS Trust, said:

"Using 5G technology we have been able to expand our virtual reality (VR) use in our palliative care service to provide VR sessions for our patients who need it most. Previously the VR experience was limited to a preloaded beach or forest experience of 15 minutes, but since connecting our VR devices to Liverpool 5G Health and Social Care's 5G network we have been able to offer patients a personalised experience as an effective distraction therapy technique". 

In America, VITAS and AT&T Business have collaborated to observe the potential therapeutic effects of VR and augmented reality (AR) for certain hospice patients. Utilising newly available 5G in the trial areas, the study aimed to test how low-latency connectivity and on-demand streaming AR & VR content can be leveraged for alternative therapies administered to keep patients comfortable, calm and mentally engaged. Teams conducting the therapy found that VR helped relieve pain and also eased anxiety, loneliness, and other disease-related symptoms, such as shortness of breath for hospice patients.

"VR technology is showing an incredible capacity to elevate our patients' moods, diminish their sympton load, an dprovide opportunities to explore and remain connected with the outside world."

said VITAS Chief Medical Officer Joseph Shega, MD.

Mixed reality is also being effectively used by Immerse Health for dementia patients, boosting wellbeing and stimulating conversation. Care homes have reported more meaningful interactions with carers, reduced aggression and even the recall of past memories. While the solution doesn’t require 5G, advanced wire-free connectivity offers a far richer, more immersive level of interactivity.
 

The West Mercia Rural 5G project developed an augmented reality Health XR solution to enable remote musculoskeletal clinics and remote physio sessions delivered by community physiotherapists. The solution used the lidar technology within an iPhone 12 Pro Max to provide a real-time (or recorded) augmented reality visualisation of a patient’s body movement and gait. The iPhone was used to create a ‘5G kinesio-visualisation' observer system that uses an Augmented Reality (AR) headset for real-time interactive kinesiological analytics. The platform combined rich sensors in augmented displays with server-based body-pose estimation for real-time AR kinematic analysis. It used an AR headset to collect 3D biometric data and 5G-enabled access to realtime body-pose identification and derived analysis. This then used the VRSS cloud solution to provide the data as an avatar to the physio through the use of the app on an iPad. Such a service can provide a visual record of patient progress, enable the physio to see that the patient is following the requested limb movements, save money and inconvenience for individuals, but most importantly, allows the physio to have evidence of patients keeping up their physio routines. 

The Telefonica 5G Madrid project is using 5G at the Hospital de la Princesa to support multiple sclerosis (MS) patients from the comfort of their own homes. Patients with MS can perform their physical condition when they undertake daily physical exercise and cognitive stimulation. An interactive virtual reality game has been developed by medical specialists and aims to explore the impact of treatment via a multiplayer experience. It is hoped the experience will offer a more convenient treatment plan for patients, and better engage individuals leading to better adherence to treatment plans.

The idea that virtual treatments may lead to better outcomes than in-person options is something also being explored by Immersive Health, who create engaging and motivating digital therapeutics solutions to overcome the limitations of existing neurorehabilitation services. By using Immersive Rehab’s Virtual Reality NeuroRehabilitation Platform, they provide an engaging and motivating solution to the current limitations of physical and neuro-rehabilitation — in particular, for people with important neurological upper limb mobility limitations and balance issues following stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis (MS) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

By engaging a person’s brain into thinking they are actually moving objects around, it is possible to tap into the neuroplasticity of their brain, which could lead to important improvements of motor function. The goal is to increase the effectiveness of neurorehabilitation and reduce referral times. It is also hoped that through 5G, patients can experience next-level personalised and interactive experiences that can play a significant role in treatment adherence and success.

There is also growing academic research suggesting virtual reality could play an important role in the treatment of anxiety disorders, including post traumatic stress disorders and eating disorders. VR-based techniques are ideal for exposure therapy because they immerse the patient in a feared environment that can be tailored to match specific aspects of their fear structures in a fully controllable setting. Results suggest virtual reality exposure is related to large declines in symptoms, demonstrating similar efficiency compared to traditional exposure interventions. With 5G, such experiences can become more realistic, immersive and include multiple participants.

While augmented reality, virtual reality and spatial computing are already being used in healthcare on a limited basis, 5G can further enhance a doctor's ability to deliver innovative, less invasive treatments. AT&T and VITAS Healthcare are collaborating to explore how 5G-powered virtual and augmented reality can support medical staff in simulating complex medical scenarios and enabling alternative treatments for the critically ill.

Imperial College London is partnering with Microsoft in the UK to enable surgeons to ‘see inside’ patients before operating. Surgeons are wearing HoloLens devices in operating theatres to can spot key blood vessels, bones and muscles before the first cut, making procedures quicker and safer.
Using the devices, surgeons can take CT scans that have previously been completed and overlay 3D digital models of them onto a patient’s limb during reconstructive surgery. This allows surgeons to very quickly understand each patient’s unique anatomy, enabling more extensive planning ahead of time and ultimately leads to better outcomes.

James Kinross — a consultant colorectal surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital, who has used HoloLens during operations — agreed that seeing inside a patient could be crucial to the success of a procedure. “You don’t want to make an incision and find out that you should be two centimetres over here, because that might compromise the operation. This is all about the best outcome for the patient,” he said.

A similar approach is being taken at the Emory Healthcare Lab in the US. 5G and mobile edge compute capabilities allow researchers to create holographic 3D anatomical renderings that can be studied from every angle and even projected onto the body in the operating room to help guide surgery. This enables physicians to better view how the body moves, ensuring fewer surprises during surgeries and better patient outcomes.

The Liverpool 5G Create project developed a 5G connected app designed to boost wellbeing and reduce anxiety amongst children under the age of eight. The Chill Panda application features a panda that expresses the user’s emotions based on their heart rate and mood ratings, with an AI driven recommendation engine creating personalised anxiety reduction content. Informed by paediatric studies the app was designed to improve child mental health and help remove the stigma around mental health challenges amongst children.

There is also growing academic research that suggests virtual reality could play an important role in the treatment of anxiety disorders, including post traumatic stress disorders and eating disorders. VR-based techniques are ideal for exposure therapy because they immerse the patient in a feared environment that can be tailored to match specific aspects of their fear structures in a fully controllable setting. Results suggest virtual reality exposure is related to large declines in symptoms, demonstrating similar efficiency compared to traditional exposure interventions. With 5G, such experiences can become more realistic, immersive and include multiple participants.

Virtual reality exposures offer a number of practical advantages compared to in-vivo exposures which can be costly and impractical. They also offer complete control, and the means to manipulate exposures in a way that may not be possible in-vivo (for example, a virtual flight can land multiple times). Plus virtual treatments have far shorter waiting times than for in-person treatment, offering vital help more quickly, helping to minimise distress for patients and securing better outcomes: considering eating disorders are estimated to cost the UK £9.4 billion a year, the capacity for earlier and potentially more effective interventions makes economic sense, too.