5G network slice for digital real-time healthcare system powered by network data analytics

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, where almost the entire global healthcare ecosystem struggled to handle patients, it’s evident that the healthcare segment needs a virtual real-time digital support system. The recent advancements in technology have enabled machine-to-machine communication, enhanced mobile broadband, and real-time biometric data analytics. These could potentially fulfill the requirements of an end-to-end digital healthcare system. For building such a system, there is also a need for a dedicated and specialized communication network. Such a system will not only support dynamic throughput, latency and payload but also provide guaranteed QoS (Quality of Service) at every instant. The motive of our study was to define an implementable low-level architecture for the digital healthcare system by using the 5G Network Slice that incorporates all these features. Best-in-class wearable devices will collect the biometric data and transmit it via the 5G network slice. Data analytics is then applied to the collected data to build a knowledge graph used for quick predictions and prescriptions. The architecture also keeps in mind the security and integrity aspects of healthcare data.