This Week in Health Tech

Ready for 5G?

January 21, 2020 Vik Patel and Jimmy Kim Season 1 Episode 6
This Week in Health Tech
Ready for 5G?
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode of This Week in Health Tech, Vik and Jimmy comment on the impact of 5G on healthcare. 

We discuss the differences between 4G and 5G wireless networks. 

5G availability will increase through 2020 and it is crucial for healthcare systems to be ready for upcoming changes. Specifically, with telemedicine, remote monitoring, transmit medical images instantaneously, AI tools, and even robotic surgery. 

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Vik Patel - LinkedIn
Tido Inc. - Website
Tido Inc. - LinkedIn

spk_0:   0:02
Welcome to another episode of this week in Health tech Where we come to The latest news and trends in health industry. My name is Jimmy Kim and I'm accompanied by my cohost Vik Patel. Hey, what's going on? Hey, Jimmy. How do I sound? Sounds great, man. Actually, your voice sounds more booming. What's up with that, man?

spk_1:   0:22
I am coming over 5G, I'm just doing all right,

spk_0:   0:27
all right. It's a little sneak peek. I

spk_1:   0:30
have a new microphone. Uh, and I'm really excited to use this. It looks good, right on camera. And it sounds good.

spk_0:   0:37
Yeah, I'm glad we're glad we're doing this through audio, so I could appreciate how good Look how good that microphone looks. But I'll about what I got. I got Vik over here. I was staring at his mic and yeah,  It's nice. Brand new. It's slick.

spk_1:   0:51
So welcome to this new episode of this week in Health Tech

spk_0:   0:55
said. Another episode, we're but we're back here for another . Before we get into today's episode, I just I got to make mention over two sponsors here today. This podcast is sponsored by Tito Link, which is a trusted tech partner for health care organizations. For more information on how to partner with Tito Inc. Please visit Tito Inc dot com. That's T I D o i n c dot com. And I also got to give a shadow to host my podcast dot com, where professional podcasts like this one are made. So in today's episode, you know, Vic kind of foreshadowed a little bit with his with his five g comment. In today's episode, we're gonna talk about five G and the impact it has on health care. So when you 1st 1st brought this up to me, I was actually interested because the you know the basics of it. The only thing I really know about the four g five g o that stuff is that you know what appears on my top left hand corner of my of my smartphone. Uh, you know, I get what the G stands for in it, But can you Can you just enlighten me on on what this means?

spk_1:   2:01
So four G is the fourth generation wireless network, and most of us today have for G. Lt right, But what's coming up? And it's it's available in some select cities today is five G, and that's what we want to focus on. Our episode today is the fifth generation off the wireless network that's that's here. It's again. It's here in a very limited capacity today. We're not really ready, but it's coming, right? How do we? I had to be prepared for that. What exactly is five G? Let's dive into that a little bit today.

spk_0:   2:43
Sure, So let's dive into it. So Hee mean? You said it was you know, that there was this. I remember there being three g for G five g. So the generations of it. But, you know, I could guess. Like things. Things like downloading, uploading things that will be a lot faster. But why? Why even have these different generations? Why? Why can't we? Why can't We couldn't just go to just straight like just faster Internet. We just call it the Internet. What? What goes into the process of making it to that next generation?

spk_1:   3:10
Well, there's a lot of research that obviously goes on, and you know, everyone's trying to go that the reason we're trying to make it faster is obviously because we want to get to the point, but there's no Laden. See, right? So, for example, if I send you a message today, it still takes so many milliseconds and I can actually tell you it takes about 30 to 40 milliseconds today on a for G lt E net Berg when I send you a message and before it reaches you. But if we get to a point where there's zero Leighton see, so it's actually immediate as soon as I send you a message. And this is where the impact on some of the industry's, including health care, would be huge and we can dive into it. Well, let's talk a little bit. Let's talk some basics right? Like you were asking about. Hey, tell me we are in the air a bit on four G today in and five G's coming. How is that different? Well, you will be able to post a lot more instagram stories a lot faster

spk_0:   4:20
that maybe like 0.1 point two milliseconds years it

spk_1:   4:24
today with four g l t t erratically, you should be able to download about 102 150 megabits per second. However, the practical thing is our speed's are usually around anywhere from 10 megabits per second to about 20 or 25 megabits per second. If you have a really good coverage with five G, that's going to theoretically again. It will be anywhere from one gigabit per second to 10 gigabits per second. Now, realistically, we don't know it's not here yet, but from what I have read so far, it seems like realistically, when we start with five g, it will be probably anywhere from 50 megabits per second to maybe 100 megabits per second. So still more than double from all the yard today. Do you know the difference between megabits and megabyte?

spk_0:   5:25
You know, megabits, I'm guessing are smaller than megabytes. But my my, my even right with him, not yours at all.

spk_1:   5:31
You are? Yeah. So 11 megabyte is eight mega beds. Right? So you typically when me when we say, hey, can you download? You know, send me the file. The video file of the photo, the the image file it we usually see in megabytes. But when we talk about the Internet speed or, you know, we talk about the network speed, it's usually in megabits per second and So, for example, if you wanted to download a file off 16 megabytes in two seconds, what kind of speed would you need? I'm not drawing of a June on the spot here. I'll answer that because,

spk_0:   6:15
ah, I wasn't very good at math class

spk_1:   6:20
to download a file of 16 megabytes in two seconds. So 64 megabits per second. Your connection speed should be 64 megabits per second. We are going to go 10 times. The other thing about five jean I'm gonna mention is not, You know, the speed is amazing. Okay, great. But the other thing is 10 times less laden. See? Right. So we talked a little bit about it. But the Laden see is the time that it takes for a device to respond to each other over the wireless network. Right. And that's what I was saying when I send you a message, how you know, what's the Laden see before it is takes you to respond to me, and I mean, that's huge. So it's going to go from probably about 30 milliseconds to about one millisecond. So it's going to be almost real time, like almost immediate, right? I mean, that's almost instantaneous is what I should say. I mean, that's beautiful.

spk_0:   7:30
And I guess that's that's the goal that people are that trying to retry that that ah, would you mentioned like there's no there's no Leighton. See right? There's no there's no lag between messages or anything like point point one is significantly a lot faster than 10.30 in the Internet realm of things or speed, Rommel thinks, especially when you're talking about things like that.

spk_1:   7:52
Yeah, and this is called this week in Health Tak. Otherwise we would go into the full, you know, stock trading and what not if you're if you're doing that over your phone and and you know what kind of impact would be in that business? But think about in in health care with no Leighton. See, I mean, if you are relying on rial time data and you're trying to save someone's life, and you know, in terms of the information going back and forth, if it's pretty much almost intent instantaneous, that could actually be the difference between saving someone's life or not.

spk_0:   8:35
Yeah, and I guess that which, which you know, is a good segue. Wait for the next point. So we know that this is going to make the, you know, make make the Internet faster for us to be able to download, upload things. So in the realm of health check, how does this how does this affect us? In the health tech world of things like, you know, I can only imagine things like patient care, which is probably always the number. One thing that that should be, you know, considered will be faster. But how will it be faster? You know, tell us, Tell us some things about that

spk_1:   9:05
in terms of healthcare like the the example. You know, we're talking about Leighton. See here, and I want to give you another example in terms of saving lives. So when you are sitting in a sports arena, right, like you're watching basketball or you're watching football. There's thousands off phones around you, and one of the things is the traffic capacity right? Or the connection density. Now, today, or the difference between four G and five g five G's, we should be able to support 100 times more traffic and 10 times more connection density, So I don't know if you have ever tried posting an instagram and you are watching a basketball game in an arena, but it usually takes forever.

spk_0:   9:58
Yeah, when I was at Game five of the finals of the Raptors Finals, last year was, Ah, it was tough to take. Take videos and stuff.

spk_1:   10:05
There you go. So it's no, it it because there's only so many connections that can support today and the connection density, which makes a huge difference. And, you know, whenever there's any kind of unfortunate event and people are trying to call 911 or you're trying to reach somebody and everyone's trying to do the same thing where that that's where air, you know, it becomes really crucial that you allow all these devices to connect. At the same time,

spk_0:   10:39
the similar thing happens. It hospitals like in in, you know, ultra crisis modes. Are things working a little bit slower? Is there a little bit more lag time between things?

spk_1:   10:50
Yeah, so I mean, in terms of emergency and healthcare, there will be a huge impact. There you can think about the ambulance is today. The ambulance can relay only so much information back to the hospital, right? Because they are using phones and and maybe they take a photo. They can try and transmit that, but it still may take a little bit more time and we don't have. There's only so much information. If you even if you had any image ing equipment within the ambulance, there's no way it's going to transmit that data back to the hospital fast so that the E. R is prepared and this patient's arriving or multiple patients arriving. They can be prepared in terms of Hey, this is what we're seeing The image ing is coming through and you know, whether it's an X ray or any kind of other image of very high quality image, and then they can make decisions. Right? Okay, this is the kind of doctor that we need and let's try and get hold of all or Or let's prepare the let's prepare the emergency room with this and this because this is what the patient's going through. This is what we see in the in the image that we just got our the video that we just got from the ambulance, right? This is on a zits on its way, and, you know, these are the kind of things that we should see an improvement in, because did the speed that it's going to transmit the data. I mean, it's like we like we talked about it's, you know, tenfold than today.

spk_0:   12:27
So outside of ah, outside the hospital's like also probably internally, like within within the within the system of that of that health care. Look, I'm I'm thinking like the I'm thinking like the storage I'm thinking about are the cloud things like that. Those things must also see a benefit of it going to five G as well, right?

spk_1:   12:47
Yes. And I think what's going to happen there Jimmy is today. There is remote monitoring right, but it is limited. But but five g We will have more devices that we can deploy for remote monitoring after patients, because what will happen is we will trust that the data coming through these devices well actually reach whether you know, and that's the other thing, that meeting to talk about, You know, whether it needs to go to the cloud or whether it needs to talk to on Prem. But the ability to actually allow these Internet of things, the remote monitoring things to actually can connect and pass so much more data in real time that can be trusted by the providers. That's going to be huge, because now healthcare organizations will have to start thinking about Okay, So before we didn't have the ability to obviously get all the data So we didn't have to worry about having an infrastructure in place to actually allow for all the eggs remote monitoring devices to transmit so much more data to us. But if this happens within the next year to two years as Maura and Maur, five g coverage is available, okay, then we better start thinking about this, right? We still be better. Start planning in terms off. What kind of remote monitoring are we going to allow? What kind of APS What kind of devices are we going to support and what kind of infrastructure are we going to you have in place? I mean, these are these are going to be some tough decisions, but you do have to be ready because if you are a hospital, that that is ready, that is, that has the infrastructure that has actually the strategy to support five G and all the devices and all the information that could come through that that will actually come to through these devices. Then you have an advantage over the hospital across the street that actually is still not ready for the five G devices and and the data and so much more data, right? That's that potentially could impact patient's health care.

spk_0:   15:11
You keep you keep mentioning the word. Ready? Ready? You know, in in my eyes, I think of it as just like how it pops up on my phone. You know, one day from three j to four g to lt is kind of like, Oh, it's there. It's happened. There was, You know, I wasn't I didn't have to actually do anything in terms of hospital. Sounds like they actually need to do something they need. As you. You keep saying we need to get ready. Like how? How could they get ready? For what? What what kinds of things should they be looking at?

spk_1:   15:40
Right, So one of the things that they need to look at Number one is how how are we going to allow these devices to connect to us? Are we going to used cloud and allow the devices to connect directly to the cloud and transmit the data Dari. Or are we going to allow them to connect to our on Prem servers? Right, Our own premise servers? Or should we have a hybrid approach where certain things can connect to the cloud and then relay certain information to the provider's? If you have, let's say, 5200 patients that you're monitoring remotely and the data that will be transmitted, whether you're collecting data on on blood pressure and heart rate or any other indicators that are constantly transmitting data and some of them in future could be even images that are coming through, then this data could be sent to the cloud right constantly in real time. And that's where you know whether the data's coming through to an A P I. The processing of the data in the cloud you have to make decisions in terms of OK, this is when we notify our providers right, I see certain critical indicators. Let's send a notification to this provider and this provider, and then and then we can make a decision. But these are the kind of things that, as you know, you mentioned me. No can. Is it natural? You just, you know, Does it just happen? No, really, because I don't think we have these kind of We don't really have this kind of in depth monitoring or this kind of data coming over constantly today because the main reason is it's not reliable, right? If you are, if you have remote monitoring devices, you can really rely on someone's wireless network, for example, to to always be on and transmit all the data. But with five G, that will be a reality.

spk_0:   17:55
And I hear the word cloud and everything that I have taught by you and are the guests that we had. And I think episode to Dennis Lieber. I think cloud over, Sonny, Think of security, right? And that. And that also takes some planning as well, right? Like a lot of planning to think about. If you're gonna start storing information into the cloud

spk_1:   18:15
100% again, the data will still be transmitted encrypted. So that's a whole another thing. Even if you're devices are transmitting the data using AP eyes and when I say a p, I I mean, that's that's a whole another integration layer that healthcare C I ose are the health care I t managers will have to think about, right? How are we going to approach the integration for all these devices? I re going to have a point to point where these devices connect directly into our any charges. Or are we going to have an application layer where the encrypted data actually talks to the application layer, where certain decision points are made and certain data goes into the HR? Certain data goes into a secondary database because you don't you don't want to really overwhelm our providers with a bunch of data, either. Right? Like we were talking about.

spk_0:   19:18
If I get if I could put you on the spot, do you do? Do you have any certain strategies that you prefer or that you think will be will be the trends or the things to look out for once this rolls around?

spk_1:   19:30
Yeah, I think one of the trend that's I see already, which is telemedicine and tell Hell's It's growing at a rate off about 15 to 20 times each year. You can imagine with five g tell health is going to become a lot easier because you can actually do face to face appointments with providers and you can, which you can do. Today, however it's there are quality issues, right. There are reliability issues and and speed issues. So even if you are a so so tell held is a trend that obviously it's growing. But it's five g if I am in health care management. This is something that I definitely want to make sure that I am ready for telehealth. I I want to make sure that I have the right pieces in place, including the right software that Debbie may wanna use for tell health and that I have the right integration in place. Four. The tell howls product that I'm using Dabble actually integrate with my E h r. Have the right information flow into the patient record so that it makes it easy for our providers to make those decisions.

spk_0:   20:49
There should be a good strategy in place or when when five g rolls around. But also, is there anything in terms of infrastructure, like should they start to upgrade their modems or stuff to upgrade their lines? Are these things that, ah, are these things that some of these hospitals should be considered doing

spk_1:   21:10
absolutely. And from a infrastructure standpoint, I think, than Africa administrators in the hospitals will definitely look into how to be upgrade our existing network to support the five G network. Right? And the other thing, too. If you think about it, the specialist at the hospital, they may be in the hospital, or they may be outside the hospital at a certain point, but you may want you may have to reach those providers. And let's say, for example, a certain case comes in into E. R. And the specialist that you need is not available in the hospital at that time, but you do need to contact them today. You you can contact that most of the time through phone, and you can talk to them. However, with five G, it will be a lot easier, hopefully for them to actually maybe do a face to face conversation with the other providers and even maybe look at the patient and make certain decisions. But then, as you're talking about inside the hospital you want, you want to provide the right tools to your care team so it makes it easy for them to take advantage of the fi G for wireless network and reach those specialists easily, right? So these are some of the things that the existing network has to be evaluated and see if this will, you know if it is compatible, or how do we upgrade so we can get maximum benefit with the five Jean

spk_0:   22:55
and you touched on the last point that I wanted to bring up, which was we have. We talked about the strategy. We talked about infrastructure, and now it's the Now it's getting the personnel, getting them on board, using using it right, And you just mentioned you mentioned some of those points out. Could you could you elaborate a little bit more?

spk_1:   23:11
Definitely. One of the ways providers will be able to take advantage off this new wireless technology is that they don't always have to be present face to face with the patient or with your clinical team to be able to actually participate in and make decisions as part of that patient's care team, right? I mean, with telehealth we talked about, you can easily check in with your patient, not only because you are doing a video, Carm friends, because you are doing a face to face video chat with the patient, but also because you have these other remote monitoring devices. They're also giving you these additional data points. With that, you should have a pretty good picture off. What exactly is going on with that patient?

spk_0:   24:07
So this all sounds really well in there, like five days rolling around. There's nothing. There's not nothing to stop the fire coming on. Sounds like it's gonna be really great for for just the general population. But also, it sounds like a lot of good things will happen in the health care industry as well. Do you see anything negative things coming because of this at all?

spk_1:   24:27
One of the things that I have heard from a negative standpoint is that some people have voiced an opinion that is five G wireless spectrum safe for us. So five she uses the 24 to 90 giga Hertz frequency. This kind of falls into the radiation portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Sorry, this is turning into a scientific podcast.

spk_0:   24:55
It's okay. Well, I always find we always somehow find the tinfoil hat conversation. I feel like this should be called tending. That's you did it has come up with a little bit him for No, You know what? This was totally not the way I thought you were gonna answer. I thought you were going to say that the the you know, one of the negative one of the tractors of this is gonna be the cost of everything. Cost of having Thio, you know, get new equipment to get new infrastructure of the cost of it. You know, that's gonna you know that you know, that Boggs down the whole system of health care a little bit, right? So that's what the direction. But this is great because, you know, you know how much I like this kind of stuff too.

spk_1:   25:32
I saw the light eyes light up. The cost is definitely going to be one thing that the decision makers will have to consider. Why the side effects from a health standpoint. And so you know, the whole thing about the higher the frequency, the Maur side effects you could have too, you know, human beings or animals. But again, you know, it hasn't been proven. We don't have enough enough data to to know the negative effects of held I see the next question coming here from him. I think you You already said You already seem to be doubting the whole, you know, Is it Is it worth my held new download data faster, right?

spk_0:   26:22
Yeah, it's It's for me. It's It's fast enough already for me. I'm I'm just I'm someone that just likes tow. Watch things on YouTube Download chose upload, upload wonderful podcasts like this one. But hit her well, Yes, in terms of like life saving, life saving things for sure, Things need to be a little bit faster, right? You know, time is of the time's of the essence.

spk_1:   26:49
Exactly. It's time is off the essence when it comes to health care. But the one of the other thing will be that this will require an extra level of awareness when it comes to privacy, right, just because and now you have potential, too. Actually transmit tons more data then we're doing today in turns more data from your phones and between providers between patients and providers. Think about that. I mean, you know what, what? The impact on on health information privacy, because today there's only so much data that we can rely on in terms of the providers were lying on on the health data on their phones. But when five G comes along and it's so fast to get that information on your phone, you will be able to make a lot more decisions based on those images. The very high quality images, whether it's the radiology image or a video that's coming through to your phone. Okay, so now I have all this data coming through, right? What about privacy? How do we handle that?

spk_0:   28:10
So, Vic, it sounds like for you like the five G is is the next best thing. It sounds like it's gonna be the thing that's going to change the health tech industry for the better, you know, And I want to hear from you the listeners out there. Do you agree with Vic? Do you? Do you agree with this point? Do you think five G's and next thing do you think we should take a take a step back and take a little Take another look at this. If so, hit us in the comments field and your favorite podcast Sabbath here. If you're not Apple iTunes listener hit us up that let us. No. Let us know whether you agree with Vic whether you don't whether we should put the tin foil hat on us. You know, while you're there, please make sure you smash that square button s So you never miss a beat so that that were in your years, every single week. Now, before we wrap this up, Vic, as always, I want to give you the last couple words here about the five G and in the health industry. Enlighten us and lighting the listeners here one last time.

spk_1:   29:03
Well, I can tell you this realistically, five g will be here in 20 twenties. There will be phoned supporting five G and the adoption. Realistically, I I would say it's still about two years away. Right? As people start to change their phones a cz, the carriers start to roll out five g in different parts off the country in different parts of the region from a health care text and point. I think it's going to have a huge impact again on remote health monitoring telemedicine, how we are able to transmit medical images. And it could even have impact on the whole mobile robotic surgery that we were talking about there may be a specialist can can no matter where they are, hopefully over five g network. They can help perform a surgery remotely With the data being transmitted so fast, E i tools can be deployed whether on the client side or on the server side to help make decisions. Ah, lot more faster.

spk_0:   30:12
All right, so that's it. Those are the last words from the tower here. I appreciate you guys tune into another episode this week. We'll be back next week to talk more about how that was a wonderful as come, please. This is Jimmy Kim, and this is Big Patel. Good night.