5G Mobile Systems for Healthcare

Abstract

This paper focuses on 5G Mobile Systems for ultra-reliable low latency communications applied to the healthcare use cases, specifically: Wireless Tele Surgery (WTS) - using a mobile console and robotic platforms with video, audio and haptic feed-back; and Wireless Service Robots (WSR) - companion robots or service robots performing tasks of social caretakers, professional personnel or family members. Cyber-sickness and latency between robotic platforms and reasoning servers are the new technical problems the 5G mobile systems are expected to solve, e.g. in hospices, hospitals, homes and campus areas. We firstly describe the 5G functional architecture and key enabling technologies to meet the associated performance requirements. This is followed by a comprehensive analysis of costs and revenues operators and healthcare providers would meet to deliver the corresponding services, if 5G systems were deployed. Business case calculations for the two players show an immediate Return on Investment (RoI) for carriers, whereas the breakeven point for healthcare providers is highly sensitive to the robotic platform price.