KIANEWS VMO2 and Nokia help create UK's first 5G-connected hospital
06. 07. 2022 Wednesday / By: Robert Denes / Reviews / Exact time: BST / Print this page
V irgin Media O2 and the NHS have teamed up to build the UK's "first 5G-connected hospital", which they say will transform healthcare.
The Maudsley Smart Hospital and Maudsley Smart Pharmacy trials are funded by NHS Digital with technology provided by VMO2 and Nokia, and aim to explore the efficiency, safety and security benefits of using 5G-enabled technologies in hospitals over standard pervasive 5G. the adjacent sectors of IoT, AR and AI.
Two wards at Bethlem Royal Hospital in south London now use "dedicated near-real-time connectivity to power e-Observation, where clinicians manually update patient records, saving valuable time and improving accuracy". It's not clear exactly what this means, but it seems that interacting with devices over 5G will be more efficient than using hospital Wi-Fi - which of course could be true depending on the state of the Wi-Fi.
An AR tool called Remote Expert allows maintenance workers at other hospitals to wear helmets and remotely help solve problems in some way, while an artificial intelligence tool called Spatial Insights generates anonymized heat maps of crowd movement from CCTV footage, which apparently helps them. to better design layouts in the future. There's also talk of smart devices and monitoring to reduce drug waste and track air quality in wards, which sounds pretty useful.
Mike Smith, Head of Enterprise and Public Sector, Virgin Media O2 Business, said: “The NHS has been a cornerstone of British society for almost 75 years and today we are proud to announce the switch-on of the UK's first 5G-enabled hospital – showing how next-generation technology can help a smarter, more modern healthcare service for everyone".
“Our aim is to map the deployment of wireless and smart hospital connectivity across the NHS over the next three to five years. Trials like this are the epitome of our mission to improve the UK and a clear indication of the role we can play in shaping the NHS of the future.”
Stuart MacLellan, Acting Chief Information Officer for South London and the Maudsley Foundation Trust, added: “Exploring and using the latest technology supports our core strategic aim to provide outstanding mental health care for people using our services, their carers and their families. We are proud to partner with Virgin Media O2 Business to create the UK's first 5G connected hospital, enabling us to use digital innovations to improve patient outcomes. This is a very exciting step forward.”
That's all well and good, and some of the above goes a little further to show that 5G can have more practical uses in the medical environment than some of the previous use cases we've covered (telesurgeons operating on people miles away, for example). Bells, whistles and 5G-connected gadgets aren't going to impress anyone who's been waiting six hours in A&E or six months on a waiting list.
5G-connected e-observations (eObs)Kester Mann, technology analyst and Director, Consumer and Connectivity at CCS Insight, said: “This is a landmark moment for the UK telecoms and healthcare sectors. Dedicated 5G in hospitals can open the door to a range of new applications such as real-time tracking of patients’ conditions, remote support and round-the-clock monitoring of medicines and equipment. Its high throughput and low-latency characteristics can also improve the efficiency and security of existing operations, making healthcare services smarter, more accurate and more effective.”
The eObs app is designed to monitor patients’ vital signs, allowing clinicians to use handheld devices to update patient records digitally and make live observations. Virgin Media O2 Business’s private 5G network, leveraging Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC), will provide the dedicated, high-speed, reliable and secure data that health professionals need to stay connected in real time to the online e-observations platform, without needing to use the hospital’s WiFi network. This will save valuable time by allowing clinicians to complete their rounds more efficiently, and also makes for more accurate record-keeping for each individual patient.
Connected smart devices and smart monitoring (Internet of Things)The 5G trials will also include an IoT innovation lab and platform, in partnership with Bruhati (South London and Maudsley has made Bruhati its strategic partner for providing IoT technology to the Trust). This will look at smart, connected use cases – including remotely monitoring medicine fridges to ensure drugs are stored at the optimum temperature and thereby reducing expensive waste, tracking the air quality inside wards, and monitoring occupancy of desks and meeting rooms in the hospital.
Augmented Reality (AR)To improve IT support as the hospital moves to more digital ways of working, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust will also trial Remote Expert – Virgin Media O2 Business’s AR (Augmented Reality) connected headset. Remote Expert allows a specialist in another location to guide on-site workers in completing complex tasks. For example, a worker in one South London and Maudsley hospital could wear the 5G-connected headset and see a remote expert in another hospital via a video stream. This means on-site IT engineers will be able to get support from experts based elsewhere quickly and easily when working on the hospital’s network and servers.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)Using Spatial Insights from Virgin Media O2 Business, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust will be able to use AI to create heat maps and understand how people move around Maudsley hospital through the analysis of footage from existing CCTV cameras in the hospital and insights on movement patterns. This means the hospital can better plan public areas, getting a picture of queues, waiting times and busy hotspots in the hospital at particular times. Spatial Insights does all this anonymously with all information processed on-site, never stored and the process is fully GDPR-compliant.
But if the NHS and its technology partners can use these trails to show how the introduction of AI heatmaps for layout planning and AR headsets for maintenance workers can reduce the time it takes to treat immediate and long-term conditions, then everyone will surely be behind them. will be expanded elsewhere. If not, the point of this technology investment seems less obvious.
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