Healthcare PANs: Personal Area Networks for trauma care and home care

The first hour following the trauma is of crucial importance in trauma care. The sooner treatment begins, the better the ultimate outcome for the patient. Generally the initial treatment is handled by paramedical personnel arriving at the site of the accident with an ambulance. There is evidence to show that if the expertise of the on-site paramedic team can be supported by immediate and continuous access to and communication with the expert medical team at the hospital, patient outcomes can be improved. After care also influences the ultimate recovery of the patient. After-treatment follow up often occurs in-hospital in spite of the fact that care at home can offer more advantages and can accelerate recovery. Based on emerging and future wireless communication technologies, in a previous paper [1] we presented an initial vision of two future healthcare settings, supported by applications which we call Virtual Trauma Team and Virtual Homecare Team. The Virtual Trauma Team application involves high quality wireless multimedia communications between ambulance paramedics and the hospital facilitated by paramedic Body Area Networks (BANs) [2] and an ambulance-based Vehicle Area Network (VAN). The VAN supports bi-directional streaming audio and video communication between the ambulance and the hospital even when moving at speed. The clinical motivation for Virtual Trauma Team is to increase survival rates in trauma care. The Virtual Homecare Team application enables homecare coordinated by home nursing services and supported by the patient's PAN which consists of a patient BAN in combination with an ambient intelligent home environment. The homecare PAN provides intelligent monitoring and support functions and the possibility to ad hoc network to the visiting health professionals’ own BANs as well as high quality multimedia communication links to remote members of the virtual team. The motivation for Virtual Homecare Team is to improve quality of life and independence for patients by supporting care at home; the economic motivation is to replace expensive hospital-based care with homecare by virtual teams using wireless technology to support the patient and the carers. In this paper we develop the vision further and focus in particular on the concepts of personal and body area networks

How 5G wireless (and concomitant technologies) will revolutionize healthcare?

The need to have equitable access to quality healthcare is enshrined in the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which defines the developmental agenda of the UN for the next 15 years. In particular, the third SDG focuses on the need to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”. In this paper, we build the case that 5G wireless technology, along with concomitant emerging technologies (such as IoT, big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning), will transform global healthcare systems in the near future. Our optimism around 5G-enabled healthcare stems from a confluence of significant technical pushes that are already at play: apart from the availability of high-throughput low-latency wireless connectivity, other significant factors include the democratization of computing through cloud computing; the democratization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cognitive computing (e.g., IBM Watson); and the commoditization of data through crowdsourcing and digital exhaust. These technologies together can finally crack a dysfunctional healthcare system that has largely been impervious to technological innovations. We highlight the persistent deficiencies of the current healthcare system and then demonstrate how the 5G-enabled healthcare revolution can fix these deficiencies. We also highlight open technical research challenges, and potential pitfalls, that may hinder the development of such a 5G-enabled health revolution

Mobihealth: mobile health services based on body area networks

In this chapter we describe the concept of MobiHealth and the approach developed during the MobiHealth project (MobiHealth, 2002). The concept was to bring together the technologies of Body Area Networks (BANs), wireless broadband communications and wearable medical devices to provide mobile healthcare services for patients and health professionals. These technologies enable remote patient care services such as management of chronic conditions and detection of health emergencies. Because the patient is free to move anywhere whilst wearing the MobiHealth BAN, patient mobility is maximised. The vision is that patients can enjoy enhanced freedom and quality of life through avoidance or reduction of hospital stays. For the health services it means that pressure on overstretched hospital services can be alleviated

Completing the Connection: Achieving Universal Service Through Municipal Wi-Fi

The federal universal service scheme is designed to ensure that everyone has affordable access to advanced telecommunications and information services. Despite the development of cost-effective technologies that drastically reduce the cost of telephone services vis-à-vis the Internet and Wi-Fi networks, federal regulations generally prevent municipalities or private companies from providing wireless Internet access with universal service funds. Federal regulations have replaced technology costs, lack of business incentives, and consumer affordability as the primary barrier to universal service. Competitive neutrality, the pro-competitive and technology-neutral approach to universal service funding, must be fully embraced in order to empower local communities with the choice of technologies that best suits their residents in providing universal and affordable access to advanced telecommunications and information services

Will 5G See its Blind Side? Evolving 5G for Universal Internet Access

Internet has shown itself to be a catalyst for economic growth and social equity but its potency is thwarted by the fact that the Internet is off limits for the vast majority of human beings. Mobile phones---the fastest growing technology in the world that now reaches around 80\% of humanity---can enable universal Internet access if it can resolve coverage problems that have historically plagued previous cellular architectures (2G, 3G, and 4G). These conventional architectures have not been able to sustain universal service provisioning since these architectures depend on having enough users per cell for their economic viability and thus are not well suited to rural areas (which are by definition sparsely populated). The new generation of mobile cellular technology (5G), currently in a formative phase and expected to be finalized around 2020, is aimed at orders of magnitude performance enhancement. 5G offers a clean slate to network designers and can be molded into an architecture also amenable to universal Internet provisioning. Keeping in mind the great social benefits of democratizing Internet and connectivity, we believe that the time is ripe for emphasizing universal Internet provisioning as an important goal on the 5G research agenda. In this paper, we investigate the opportunities and challenges in utilizing 5G for global access to the Internet for all (GAIA). We have also identified the major technical issues involved in a 5G-based GAIA solution and have set up a future research agenda by defining open research problems