5G hospital network standard takes shape

Under the direction of the National Health Commission (NHC) of China and led by China-Japan Friendship Hospital-National Telemedicine and Connected Health Center-National Primary-care Telemedicine Development Center, more than 30 hospitals and China Association of Medical Equipment (CAME) have joined forces with China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and Huawei to establish China's first 5G Hospital Network Standard .

The initiative ceremony was held at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital. The 5G Hospital Network Standard will be the technical guidance that the medical institutes and the telecom enterprises have come together and cooperated to develop in the 5G+ Medicine. This is a clear indication that 5G technologies are at the heart of the next generation of China's medical infrastructure networks. It also demonstrates that the Gigabit capabilities, low latency, and massive connections enabled through 5G networks have been widely recognized throughout the 5G + medical pilot programs by the Healthcare sector in China.

Telehealth had been well recognized by both the government and the public, which had gained the driven forces from the government policies. Since the release of the tele-healthcare pricing and assurance policy in Aug. 2019, the relative service and running system would gradually form to shape. This will see significant benefits for the regional application and deployment of high-quality medical resources, while improving primary-level health care, and enabling closer communications between doctors and patients. To date, the National Telemedicine and Connected Healthcare Center has setup a research project for the 5G-based telemedicine networks, involving more than 30 general hospitals and telecom enterprises. And as 5G equipment is deployed in further hospitals, the number of hospitals contributing to the project will increase. This project will focus on the 5G-based telemedicine applications. Studies carried out so far have looked at combining clinical applications and the technical standard. The aim being to fully understand the 5G network capabilities and network construction guidance, which might help the hospitals to build the 5G network in good quality and benefit to the future coordination between hospitals.

At the initiative ceremony, Nie Chunlei, Chief of NHC's primarycare healthcare department shared his views on the project. "The Internet + medical development at the primary level requires a well-calibrated top-down design and implementation to ensure healthy, standardized growth. The standard will be developed based on the successful experience of previous programs and combines the wisdom of medical and communication experts to effectively apply 5G in hospitals. As part of the infrastructure of information-driven primary healthcare, it will accelerate the Internet+ medical development, improve primary healthcare to become more convenient, accessible, and helpful to the people."

Jiao Yahui, Deputy Director of NHC's Medical Administration Authority expressed the support of her department. "China is a global leader in the applications and models of the Internet medical services. For example, we already launched convenient query services in health management and 5G-based telemedicine. This underlines the necessity of rules that ensure service quality and long-term steady development in this field. We are confident that we can and we will do our utmost to formulate the medical standards for China and even for the world through the 5G+ medical programs."

Liu Wenxian, Deputy Director of NHC's Development Planning and Information Department said: "With the strong support of 5G, Internet medical cares have witnessed much progress this year, with a number of mature 5G healthcare solutions being unveiled. This further underlines the necessity of national policies to support scaled medical applications integrated with radio communication solutions. At present, established in cooperation with communication service providers, this standard will better enable us to address the current principal contradiction in China's medical systems, and implement the Internet + medical program aimed at improving service provisioning in major hospitals."

"5G and Internet medical services are crucial for China's economic development." said Wang Hui, Director of the National Institute for Economic Research of the Development Research Center of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. "5G nurtures new scenarios, creates new breakthroughs and new opportunities in the medical industry, and promotes the Internet+ medical development in China. We have always and will continue to support the development of 5G+ medical services in terms of research, industry ecosystem, and policy planning and guidance."

"Learning from the previous experiences, we began to clearly understand that 5G can provide stable and high-quality Gigabit services for hospitals. 5G will prove extremely helpful in delivering digital, mobile, and telehealth care while driving high-quality development of the healthcare. We are honored to participate in formulating this Standard" said Zhou Jun, General Secretary of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital.

Lu Qingjun, Director of China-Japan Friendship Hospital/National Telemedicine and Connected Health Center/National Primary-care Telemedicine Development Center, reported the progress made, saying that: "Emergency and critical cases have more demand for cross-discipline joint diagnosis, for which more data needs to be transmitted and where faster responsiveness to various changing factors must be ensured. In one of our invited remote diagnosis cases with a Singapore hospital concerning a critical pulmonary case, 12 GB of data was transferred in 12 hours. Today, during the demonstration, 6 GB of data was instantly downloaded. There are so many cases like this in Internet medical services that require the benefits of 5G. Most applications take place within and between hospitals, emphasizing the significance of indoor 5G services."

5G Gigabit Network: The Foundation for Vertical Industries

Liu Ying, General Manager of the Government and Enterprise Customer Department of China Telecom, stated that 2019 is the first year of 5G's commercial adoption, adding that: "5G has seen the strongest demand in the medical industry as it integrates with various vertical industries. China Telecom will work closely with the government, industry experts, and partners as well as other telecom carriers to facilitate the development of this Standard and outline the blueprint for 5G smart healthcare."

General Manager of Product Center 1 of the Government & Corporate Customer Business Group of China Mobile said: "China Mobile is pushing for large-scale 5G construction. We have planned to provide commercial 5G services in more than 50 cities this year, and we'll expand 5G services to all cities at the prefecture level and above next year. We are also launching the 5G+ program, aiming to cooperate with medical institutions and other industry partners to develop 100 demonstration applications for vertical industries. Under the direction of the National Health Committee, we have successfully initiated the setup of a healthcare-dedicated big data company to focus on the business operations of big data applications for Internet medical services through joint collaboration with many other partners concerned."

"Huawei began 5G + healthcare research in 2016." said Zhang Wenlin, President of the Corporate Strategy Department of Huawei. "Since then, Huawei has built hundreds of 5G+ healthcare pilot projects based on our 5G indoor solution. Now, we have already contributed to the commercial implementation of many healthcare applications, including telemedicine (MDT cares), imaging tele-diagnosis, ECG tele-diagnosis, ultrasonic diagnosis, and training online. This Standard is fundamental to developing a robust industry ecosystem and accelerating the maturity of the industry. We are confident that the Standard will promote the digital transformation in the medical industry and play an important role in assuring quality and safety while encouraging scaled business growth. In the long term, the standard will benefit the overall improvement of medical technologies and services and facilitate Smart Hospital and better healthcare development of China. We believed that this Standard will serve as an example for developing the 5G Standards in many other vertical industries."

Joint Chemotherapy Diagnosis for Three Complicated Severe Cases Utilizing 5G Gigabit Network

At the initiative ceremony, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Guizhou Provincial People's Hospital, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region People's Hospital, with the support of China Telecom's 5G networks, completed a joint chemotherapy diagnosis for three complicated severe cases based on HD video conferences. With Gigabit transmissions, the pathological and radiological images data was transferred at high speed and instantly shared among the experts at the five hospitals with zero waiting time. The transfer of huge amounts of data is no longer a problem for tele-diagnosis, significantly improving diagnosis efficiency.

Remote consultation based on 5G network with five hospitals

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