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How 5G in healthcare can help IoT, wearables adoption

By Jack Burbank

IoT is an architectural vision where devices that generate or use data are all connected through a single network. This
enables monitoring, management and control of processes and functions in a way unimaginable just a couple decades
ago. The IoT paradigm enables situational awareness, automation, streamlining and simplification of its use cases.

In the era of wearable healthcare devices, the healthcare industry has an unprecedented opportunity to revolutionize
patient care. Wearables provide an opportunity to oversee patients in a way previously thought impossible, which can
dramatically improve diagnostic capabilities, treatment options and patient outcomes.

Like all previous opportunities of this scale, there are also numerous challenges to address.

First, healthcare wearables must be secure. These devices are inherently exposed to the same threats that internet-
connected devices face. We must protect patient privacy and confidentiality because it is ethically right and there are legal
precedents. Malicious actors must not be able to access, change or tamper with healthcare device data. The system must
be trusted and reliable.

Second, healthcare wearables must be affordable. If they are expensive, it will be cost-prohibitive to grow to large scales.
Without affordability, healthcare IoT fails.

Third, healthcare wearables must be, at least to some degree, interoperable. Without interoperability, we eventually get
locked into proprietary vendor offerings. This model has played out many times historically and always leads to higher
costs, lower capabilities and eventual supportability issues.

Fourth, the network that supports healthcare wearables must be scalable to grow and meet whatever required size and
bandwidth are needed to support in-hospital infrastructure and the industry.

If healthcare IoT can't meet the challenges of security, affordability, interoperability and scalability, it will likely fail.

Address potential healthcare IoT challenges with 5G

Standardization is one key. Standardization has historically been the biggest enabler in technology cost reduction and
interoperability. This doesn't refer to the devices themselves, but how they interact with the external world. With
communication protocols and data formats standardized, multivendor offerings become possible and make it easier to
implement IoT in healthcare.

5G cellular technology is a key enabler of IoT, and I believe could enable large-scale healthcare wearables as part of
healthcare IoT. There are many advantages to using 5G in these devices:

Scale. 5G has been developed specifically to scale to dense networks supporting enormous amounts of devices.
Few, if any, other current or emerging wireless technologies can match the scalability of 5G.
Performance. 5G has higher capacity and lower latency compared to many other technologies. This means that it
can support more devices and more data with better performance.
Pervasiveness. 5G is, or soon will be, almost everywhere. That is clearly advantageous – no matter where people
go, their wearable device will be connected. Many other technologies are more geographically limited, require
proximity to other devices or infrastructure and are not ubiquitous.
Economies of scale. 5G is being developed to support tens of billions of users. Low-cost 5G modems for wearable
devices will be increasingly available at lower costs.
Standardization. 5G is a standards-based technology developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
That's why a phone works no matter where it's used. A phone is interoperable with all the 5G networks it encounters
because they've all been developed to the same standards.

Looking ahead with 5G and healthcare IoT

5G for healthcare wearables is a no-brainer. It doesn't single-handedly solve every challenge that healthcare IoT poses, but
it does start to help address several of the big problems. The biggest challenge is that most current wearables are
predicated on connecting to the wearer's cellular device via short-range technologies, such as Bluetooth.

5G adoption requires a paradigm shift. But this shift makes sense, for device makers but also healthcare providers and
consumers in general. It's inevitable.
In the current paradigm, health data coming from a wearable often first traverses a short-range technology to an
application on a phone. Then, the phone's application, if configured to do so, can share that data with an internet-based
data store over the cellular network.

If the wearable had 5G, it would reduce the process time. The wearable device can now communicate directly to internet-
based data stores, which cell phone-based applications could still access via the cellular network. This information is also
more readily available to authorized third parties. Furthermore, this sensitive health data is now solely traveling across the
more secure 5G network, instead of through multiple devices.

Furthermore, because of the strong standardization backing of 5G technology, there is a path toward future capabilities
and improved performance. 3GPP continually develops new cellular standards with new features and performance
capabilities, often not requiring end-device upgrades.

5G adoption in the healthcare wearable industry is coming and coming soon. Embedded 5G chipsets are becoming
cheaper, so it's going to make more and more financial sense. 5G addresses, at least in part, most of the biggest
challenges facing healthcare IoT and large-scale healthcare wearables.

It's unlikely 5G will completely replace other incumbent wireless technologies that wearables already use. Rather, I think
5G can be complimentary and coexist with these other wireless technologies in a way where everybody wins. I see this
adoption starting in the near term. It may start slow, but in five years, the market will have a lot of 5G-enabled devices.

About the author

Jack L. Burbank is an IEEE senior member and executive director of advanced communications at Sabre Systems, where he
helps design, develop and evaluate next-generation wireless capabilities. Burbank is an expert in the areas of wireless
networking, modeling and simulation, wireless system development and wireless network security. Burbank earned his
Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University in 1994 and
1998, respectively.

11 Oct 2022

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