5G can help to fight against Coronavirus, says Deloitte

Nigeria’s oldest indigenous accounting firm, Deloitte has said that 5G can help in the fight against coronavirus.

A newly-released Deloitte White Paper suggests that 5G, which is the fifth generation of wireless communications technologies supporting cellular data networks, could enhance the effectiveness of pandemic prevention and treatment and drive the digital transformation of healthcare systems in response to major public emergencies, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The White Paper entitled, “Combating COVID-19 with 5G: Opportunities to improve public health systems” was produced in collaboration with Huawei.

During the outbreak in China, telecommunications operators collaborated with Huawei to rapidly set up a specific 5G network dedicated to COVID-19 treatment hospitals.

The White Paper analysed examples of COVID-19 control and treatment measures in China and identified challenges that face epidemic management in terms of monitoring, quarantine and treatment.

Among its findings, the White Paper noted the effectiveness of communication and data exchange has been essential in screening for infected individuals and controlling the outbreak.

This by enabling thermal imaging, continuous remote monitoring and diagnoses during patient transfer. The research also highlighted the need to build and upgrade public health emergency response mechanisms, through which governments can make right decisions promptly and allocate resources more effectively.

“In this regard, 5G can also promote collaboration by enabling connectivity, maintaining effective communication among hospitals, and enable medical data and reference sharing between hospitals and scientific research institutions, especially in the rapid increases in data volume and mounting demand for remote and HD-video-based treatment scenario.”

In addition, the report indicated that the success of 5G applications in the public health domain could also inspire new business models in other sectors.

It revealed that as a result of 5G features such as high-speed connection, high reliability and low latency, the healthcare system had benefitted from improved response times, patient monitoring, data collection and analytics, remote collaboration and resource allocation. It also sets an example for digitalised, data-driven and coud-based innovative major public emergency response platforms.