What 5G can do for COVID-19
After the outbreak of the COVID-19 this year, a variety of 5G use cases such as remote consultations and intelligent medical robots were quickly applied into the fight against epidemic which shows the value of of 5G. However, its cases we saw in the anti-epidemic are scattered to show its systematic value leading to some people think that this is just a gimmick without much practical value.
Assuming 5G has been commercialized on a large scale, it enable epidemic prevention and control as follow:
–Intelligent terminal can timely monitor the body parameters, construct personal health labels, and report suspected patients, thereby effectively shortening the diagnosis time.
–5G indoor and outdoor positioning capability can accurately track the position and trajectory of suspected cases, improving the recognition accuracy of close contacts.
–5G + AI medical and ultra-high-definition video remote consultation can improve medical efficiency.
–Drones can automatically put protective materials such as masks and disinfectants to reduce cross infection and control the spread of viruses.
–Driverless ambulance can shorten the treatment time.
Lets see how it work when all are with 5G network:
1. Based on the above its capabilities, a 5G empowered disease control system was constructed. With the support of terminals and network capabilities, the system linkes public security, operators, disease control centers, hospitals, emergency centers, communities and individuals together.
When the epidemic occurs, the disease control system pushes and installs the disease control client software to all mobile phones, watches, bracelets, etc. which are used to monitor and collect user’s physical parameters in real time and close contacts, etc., and set a health label as a health proof for citizens to travel and resume work.
2. Authorized by the Ministry of Public Security, after taking necessary action on the privacy protection, the location track and physical sign detection data constitute a large database, which is provided to the disease control expert system and other required systems. The disease control expert system judges whether the user is suspicious based on big data analysis and reports to the disease control decision-making command center who immediately notified the suspected user to isolation and coordinated with the community joint defense center to distribute masks, disinfectants, isolation clothing and other protective materials to the isolated users through drones.
3. If further analysis reveals that the suspected user has had a close contact with the diagnosed patient, hospital with sufficient medical resources to treat the user immediately. Based on the user’s location and the target hospital location, the CDC sent a 5G unmanned emergency vehicle to treat the user.
4. If the user is diagnosed in the hospital, all users who have had close contact with the patient will be further identified through the system, and each community joint defense system will be operated in parallel to perform individual isolation.
5. For diagnosed patients, experts from multiple places give the best treatment plan for patients through remote consultation system and 5G + AI smart medical system.
The simulation results show that after the introduction of the 5G-enabled disease control system, the probability of successful identification of close contacts is 98%, and the time of infection from the time of transmission to the treatment of the infected person is compressed to 2-8 hours. Compared with the original system, after the introduction of 5G, the epidemic is controlled in about 30 days, with a total of 350 new infections,which is far less than the number of infections of 1700 in the original shutdown state.
This assuming study shows that using 5G large connection, high speed, accurate positioning, intelligent sign monitoring, 5G unmanned aerial vehicle etc., with the client software to improve the joint defense and joint control mechanism, the 5G empowered disease control system effectively improve the identification accuracy of close contacts, shorten the time of diagnosis and admission isolation, thereby helping to control the spread of the epidemic, and support the resumption of production to improve social productivity
In a word, 5G plays important roles in smart medical system, epidemic warning, pre-hospital emergency, remote diagnosis and treatment, and intelligent image-assisted diagnosis