The Atlanta, Ga.-based Emory Healthcare and Verizon have strategically partnered on the creation of what officials say is the nation's first 5G-enabled healthcare lab.
The Emory Healthcare Innovation Hub, a healthcare advancement and commercialization program, leverages the 11TEN Innovation Partners’ “demand driven innovation” approach, aiming to solve the most pressing problems facing healthcare today. The lab will be lit up by Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband service, and Verizon will also collaborate with Emory Healthcare and its nine Innovation Hub partners to help spur the development of healthcare solutions powered by 5G.
Officials contend that Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network has the potential “to help redefine patient care with real-time data analytics, giving researchers the ability to explore solutions such as connected ambulances, remote physical therapy and next-generation medical imaging.”
They add that EHIH will be able to test how 5G could enhance augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications for medical training, enable telemedicine and remote patient monitoring, and provide point of care diagnostic and imaging systems from the ambulance to the ER.
"The healthcare industry, driven by value-based care and increased consumerization, is set for a paradigm shift that will put a much greater focus on connectivity and access to data,” Scott D. Boden, M.D., vice president for business innovation for Emory Healthcare, said in a statement. “Across every facet of healthcare, from care innovation to reimbursement model transformation to decentralization of care, speed to data is critical to the digital evolution of health.”
Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business Group, added, “With 5G, doctors should be able to do things like create holographic 3D anatomical renderings that can be studied from every angle and even projected onto the body in the OR to help guide surgery.”
Verizon currently operates five 5G Labs in the U.S. and one 5G Lab in London that specialize in developing 5G uses cases in industries ranging from healthcare to public safety to entertainment. While this is the first 5G lab Verizon has set up on-premises for a customer, it will be part of an ongoing initiative to co-develop 5G-related use cases to help customers transform their industries, according to officials.
The ribbon cutting for the new 5G healthcare innovation lab takes place Friday, Feb. 28.
