How 5G helped in Fighting COVID 19 in China

Fighting COVID 19 will be a battle for everyone in the community. In each country, the government is responsible for the quick control of the illness, allocating sufficient resources for patients and providing effective medical care.

5G has advantages over 4G in speed, latency, number of connection points and range making it more adaptable. These features can address data transmission challenges during an epidemic, as well as open up possibilities for fresh ideas and new treatment methods, below an example of 5G use case that helped fighing COVID 19 in China.

Communication support during patient transfer

HD remote diagnosis and other medical monitoring systems are required when infected people are being transferred to hospital. 5G networks can provide the bandwidth, speed, and mobility needed to stably transmit large data sets in real time.

5G enables continuous remote monitoring and diagnosis during patient transfer

Once an individual is identified as a suspected or confirmed infection, treatment becomes a race against time. In China, the peak of the outbreak was concentrated into a short period and, medical emergency systems were tested by a large volume of cases. According to media reports, the average number of ambulance dispatches in Wuhan was about 400 a day in January 2019, but jumped to 600 during the coronavirus outbreak, with some days recording more than 800 dispatches. Some SMART ambulances carry emergency care communication and diagnostics kits, serving a unique role in the healthcare system.

Apart from transporting patients safely, they provide emergency treatment remotely, as well as collecting and transmitting information to hospitals so they can develop treatment and quarantine plans. To achieve this, the network needs to provide fast, stable data transmission that can support these rapidly moving objects.

Benefiting from 5G networks’ fast data load speeds of over 100Mbps, SMART ambulances with 4K HD monitoring systems can send videos and transmit medical data to command centres in real time, allowing support staff to communicate with ambulance crews. If necessary, a command centre can initiate diagnosis conferences with experts and ambulance crews for emergency response, ensuring a patient’s smooth transition from the ambulance to hospital.

This combination of 5G network and 4K SMART ambulances transforms the medical emergency response model: it digitalizes its operation, from mobilizing treatment to data collection and real time communication, improving treatment efficiency and effectiveness.