Healthcare, security among sectors that promise to benefit most from 5G, panelists say

5G connectivity provides a promise of unique use cases that 4G cannot support, but many are just being realized or continue to await technological developments—notably, network slicing—to be real factors in the marketplace, according to panelists at the Big 5G Event conducted last month in Austin.

Jodi Baxter, vice president of 5G and IoT connectivity for Canadian carrier Telus, said her company is particularly focused on the healthcare sector, noting that the combination of 5G and other technological advances could save the life of a stroke victim.

“When a patient has a stroke that is created by a blood clot, there is a very specific window of time that a drug can be administered, but that drug has to be administered by a doctor’s authority,” Baxter said during the panel. “With connected glasses and connected ambulances—really just a modem in an ambulance that’s connected to 5G—the doctor and the EMT actually can converse through that connectivity, and the doctor can make the call on the drug administration, which then can be done in the ambulance.”

In addition, the broadband connectivity in ambulances can allow ultrasound and other tests results to be sent to doctors at a hospital before a patient arrives, allowing the healthcare professionals to be better prepared to take actions as quickly as possible, Baxter said. 5G can be used to support virtual healthcare appointments for patients that may not be able to access a doctor’s office or clinic quickly or easily, she said.

Bill Britton, CIO and vice president for information technology at Cal Poly, said he was impressed by the 5G capabilities that were on display during the Big 5G Event, but he was not sure how best to leverage them.

“As a user, I’m more confused than when I arrived.,” Britton said. “There are a lot of great products, a lot of great capabilities, and lot of great things, but I haven’t figured out how they apply.”

This is a similar sentiment Britton has had in the everyday world, noting that what is available in the marketplace is not necessarily what his university needs.

”I and my team have been physically chasing opportunities to have 5G on the campus,” he said. “But because it didn’t fit the use of the provider, they literally said, ‘We don’t know what to do to help you. Go look elsewhere.’”

Britton said he will continue looking, because he has many connectivity needs on the Cal Poly campus, whether it is supporting online registration, student and staff connectivity, or transmitting signals from the fitbits on chickens in the agricultural area.

No matter the application, security needs to be prioritized—something that was not always the case, Britton said.

“One of the things that we’ve seen is that the number-two target in the U.S. for malware and ransomware is, believe it or not, education,” Britton said. “So, everything we do has to be secure beyond compare, and that’s not been the logical progression for universities over time, to be that secure.

“I worked in the government. We had to design a system for our university that parallels the government’s protection system. That’s a mind-blowing thought, all by itself … When I arrived at the university, we had one security person, and that person was not technical—it was all policy. So, it’s a significant shift that now has to be embedded into what you’re building and utilizing.”

Lori Thomas, MetTel’s senior vice president of strategic engagement and transformation, expressed optimism that 5G can provide the type of connectivity needed to support the technologies and processing power needed to best secure data transmissions.

“When you have 5G coupled with blockchain, that will be exponentially better for the IoT security—with all of these connected devices—and being able to track everything and know where things are at any time,” Thomas said during the panel.

Several panelist mentioned the important role that 5G can play as entities try to measure their efforts to meet sustainability goals, which means collecting data regularly from an ever-growing number of IoT sensors. Britton said it is daunting task.

“I love the aspect of sustainability—I have 20,000 students who believe that sustainability is the only way that they believe they will be able to inherit the Earth,” Britton said. “But the amount of data that you generate in the name of sustainability is driving me nuts. There’s the measurement on the front end, where you have to measure how much bad we’re doing. Then, we have to measure how we’re sustaining it. Then, we have to measure how we’ve corrected it.  And then we do an evaluation.

“We’re creating a data-nightmare-type effect. So I need those different privatized elements—those different mediums—by which we can collect that data and assess it in different modes. Again, we’re like a mini-city. I can only imagine what a city manager faces, with all of these same restrictions and other things … We really have created so many data nodes that are important.”

Thomas said that some entities are building their own private 5G networks to support connectivity for a specific set of use cases, then often explore the possibility of expanding the use of the system.

Meanwhile, Baxter said that other entities would like to take advantage of network slicing—a 5G capability that allows an operator to dedicate parts of its system to deliver the characteristics for a specific application—noting that she believes slicing will be a “big game-changer around security.”

However, one problem with this strategy today is that network slicing is not supported yet by many network operators. Baxter said that could change in the future, particularly in the transportation arena.

“If a car is going to drive itself, it’s going to have to be in a [network] slice,” Baxter said.