5G in life sciences - Beyond connectivity

The pervasive connectivity fabric of 5G

5G is not just another connectivity technology. 

 It brings a unique ability to embed ultra-reliable, ultra-fast, and machine-scale connectivity deeply into the transformational industry capabilities. The pervasive connectivity fabric of 5G reinforces technology advances in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), industry automation, autonomous vehicles, and smart cities. 5G technology will significantly impact the life sciences industry as the focus now shifts to patient-centricity and evidence-based healthcare outcomes.

Digital tech driving 5G adoption 

As industries embrace emerging technologies, we witness why a private 5G network is pivotal to enabling emergent tech success. Technologies such as XR and the metaverse, quantum computing, and robotics depend on the benefit of connectivity. They also need some of the granular capabilities of 5G to deliver value and experience, to both consumers and enterprises. 

For life sciences companies, the 5G network and its capabilities of reliability, ultra-high speed, and low latency service will open new avenues for robots and collaborative bots. It will be challenging to execute discreet automation use cases, especially, in a man-machine environment without 5G.

Four pillars of 5G that make it integral for life sciences industry transformation

5G is compelling to technologists, futurists, and enterprise strategy planners.  

Private 5G will unlock new generation of industry use cases from digital surgery and precision medicine to autonomous warehouses and factories.

The four pillars upon which any 5G use case rests include the following: 

• 5G is deterministic, which will help meet guaranteed service quality indicators that would be essential to realize outcomes promised by use cases such as precision medicine. There are hardly a few technologies that afford determinism. For example, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) is a deterministic network but sacrifices speed and ability to do more in terms of use case scope and functionality.  

• 5G is elastic, just like cloud technology, a critical determinant for the success of use cases like digital surgery where surgery applications dynamically orchestrate the network capacity and the characteristic it needs without any impact on the end outcomes.

• 5G is programmable and allows life sciences industries to build applications like a robotic surgical arm, to directly invoke, and control network using APIs. 

The art of the possible in life sciences 

5G will have a transformative impact on the life sciences industry. 

It equips companies with a whole lot of new capabilities, such as: 

• Better health services: 5G and its ability to fuse machine-sensor data coupled with low latency communication capabilities ushers in a new era of patient-centricity for life science industries. 5G will provide added impetus to manage health upstream from connected health and preventive care by integrating wearable sensors and internet of medical things at home to empower first responders with 5G-powered diagnostic capabilities. 

• Agile and autonomous factories: As the industry emphasizes on patient-centric outcomes and precision medicine, organizations must cater to volatile demands to embrace industrial automation. 5G’s seamless interoperability with operational technology (OT) systems introduces factory automation and IoT capabilities powered by the 5G connectivity grid without changing the SCADA backbone or OT systems landscape.

• Elastic and resilient supply chains: The efficacy of value-based care transformation in life sciences industries is measured by the ability of supply chains to cater to demand in a timely fashion. 5G and the capabilities it unlocks, from track and trace to autonomous warehouses, are the key to building the next generation of supply chains. 5G is critical for a smarter and more resilient supply chain.