Moglia Andrea, Georgiou Konstantinos, Marinov Blagoi, Georgiou Evangelos, Berchiolli Raffaella Nice, Satava Richard M, Cuschieri Alfred
IEEE J Biomed Health Inform. 2022 Aug;26(8):4187-4196. doi: 10.1109/JBHI.2022.3181205. Epub 2022 Aug 11.
Worldwide up to May 2022 there have been 515 million cases of COVID-19 infection and over 6 million deaths. The World Health Organization estimated that 115,000 healthcare workers died from COVID-19 from January 2020 to May 2021. This toll on human lives prompted this review on 5G based networking primarily on major components of healthcare delivery: diagnosis, patient monitoring, contact tracing, diagnostic imaging tests, vaccines distribution, emergency medical services, telesurgery and robot-assisted tele-ultrasound. The positive impact of 5G as core technology for COVID-19 applications enabled exchange of huge data sets in fangcang (cabin) hospitals and real-time contact tracing, while the low latency enhanced robot-assisted tele-ultrasound, and telementoring during ophthalmic surgery. In other instances, 5G provided a supportive technology for applications related to COVID-19, e.g., patient monitoring. The feasibility of 5G telesurgery was proven, albeit by a few studies on real patients, in very low samples size in most instances. The important future applications of 5G in healthcare include surveillance of elderly people, the immunosuppressed, and nano- oncology for Internet of Nano Things (IoNT). Issues remain and these require resolution before routine clinical adoption. These include infrastructure and coverage; health risks; security and privacy protection of patients' data; 5G implementation with artificial intelligence, blockchain, and IoT; validation, patient acceptance and training of end-users on these technologies.
截至2022年5月，全球已有5.15亿例新冠病毒感染病例，死亡人数超过600万。世界卫生组织估计，2020年1月至2021年5月期间，有11.5万名医护人员死于新冠病毒。这一生命代价促使人们对基于5G的网络进行此次综述，主要涉及医疗服务的主要组成部分：诊断、患者监测、接触者追踪、诊断成像检查、疫苗分发、紧急医疗服务、远程手术和机器人辅助远程超声。5G作为新冠应用的核心技术产生了积极影响，它实现了方舱医院海量数据集的交换和实时接触者追踪，同时低延迟增强了机器人辅助远程超声以及眼科手术中的远程指导。在其他情况下，5G为与新冠相关的应用提供了支持技术，例如患者监测。5G远程手术的可行性已得到证实，尽管针对真实患者的研究较少，且大多数情况下样本量非常小。5G在医疗保健领域未来的重要应用包括对老年人、免疫抑制人群的监测以及用于纳米物联网（IoNT）的纳米肿瘤学。问题依然存在，在常规临床应用之前需要解决这些问题。这些问题包括基础设施和覆盖范围；健康风险；患者数据的安全和隐私保护；5G与人工智能、区块链和物联网的结合应用；这些技术的验证、患者接受度以及终端用户培训。
