Think for a moment about the variables that could affect the life of a loved one as they are traveling from home to hospital in an ambulance.
What does it take to increase the chance of successful treatment?
- Is the emergency room getting a real-time view of the detailed patient condition from diagnostic tests carried out in the ambulance?
- Are there traffic routes the ambulance driver could take to save time or a way to avoid tunnels that disrupt the communication of the patient’s diagnosis data?
- Is the patient’s medical history data being securely aggregated with real-time data collected from the ambulance to the hospital?
Imagine the peace of mind knowing that all of these variables were checked off in favor of the patient. This is the power of 5G slicing—powering split-second decisions that can be the difference between life and death.
You could also think about this from the perspective of an EMS worker that wears a health device/monitor. They need to know when it’s no longer safe to be in a certain situation—like a firefighter being alerted before they reach dangerous levels of carbon monoxide exposure.
The common denominator for both patient and first responders is providing them with their own personal and dynamic 5G network slice. Doing so ensures that mission critical data from their mobile devices can be analyzed and sent in real-time to where it needs to be.
A highly customizable and responsive cloud-based network infrastructure is key to public safety and health applications
Let’s further examine the benefits of a 5G slice network and its positive impact on 5G capable devices.
- Situational or time-based communication: Optimal connectivity to the devices and equipment needs to be part of a virtual network for a specified duration of time—like during an ambulance ride to the hospital. For example, a doctor at the hospital could receive live-stream HD video during the patient’s ambulance ride for proper triage.
- Dynamic network slicing and provisioning: 5G slices provide a highly customizable and responsive network infrastructure to support public safety and health applications, delivering secure connectivity to the devices and equipment needed to be part of a virtual network for a specified duration of time. For example, during an ambulance ride to the hospital, diagnostic data from the patient’s personal health devices and professional medical gear can be securely collected to aid diagnosis and treatment.
The future of health and public safety is here now, and 5G slices are at the heart of it all
You need the ability to dynamically provide the connectivity required for a set of 5G-enabled devices and increase the rate of success by providing rich data and analysis exactly when it is needed. In parallel, a 5G slice optimizes the impact to the network and reduces costs to the health provider.
Combining the inherent flexibility of a 5G network with AI-powered automation provided by IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation, you gain a 5G autonomous network and the means to organize that configuration to support the use cases above.
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