5G and health - quick, quick, slow

After I wrote last week that protests against the 5G rollout might actually be damaging to our health by slowing the progress of digital medicine I was contacted by someone endorsing my message. Not surprising, perhaps, because my correspondent was from an organisation called WM5G which describes its mission in the West Midlands as “to deliver the benefits of 5G for people, public services and businesses and become future fit through connectivity solutions.”

But when I got on a video call with Jon Vesey and his colleague Jayne Rooke - both health and care sector leads at WM5G - it soon became clear that the nirvana of transforming healthcare through greater connectivity was still some way away.

As we spoke, I suddenly realised that I had filmed with their organisation on a historic day for 5G - and for me. On 30th May 2019, the day when the UK’s first 5G network went live, I used it to do a live broadcast about the new technology for BBC Breakfast. I then headed to Birmingham to do some more filming about the impact of 5G for later news bulletins. On the way, having been told that many viewers had noticed my hand shaking during the live broadcast, I composed a tweet revealing that I had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The response was hugely positive -apart from one man who reckoned I’d got it standing too close to 5G masts.

We then went to stand near another mast on top of a Birmingham tower block where a man from WM5G told us how greater connectivity was going to do amazing things for the ambulance service. Two trials were getting underway which would use 5G to effectively turn ambulances into mobile hospitals . The first involved a haptic glove which a member of the ambulance crew could use to send data about a patient back to a specialist at the hospital wearing a similar glove, the other used the 5G network to send back ultrasound data about stroke victims or cases where a stroke was suspected.

So, nearly four years on, how was the 5G revolution going in the West Midlands? Slowly, admitted Jon and Jayne. I asked Jon how much haptic glove work was being done in ambulances. “Close to - almost identical to - zero,” he admitted. “It was an interesting pilot, but it was always a demonstration of what could be done rather than actually something that was desperately needed.”

As for sending ultrasound data about stroke victims back to hospitals, that was happening in the West Midlands and a number of other regions but mostly using other forms of connectivity than 5G.

This did not surprise me at all. Whenever a new “G” comes along there arevastly optimistic forecasts of the speed of the rollout and the kinds of use cases we can expect. In 2001 I travelled to the Isle of Man to report on the coming 3G revolution, telling the BBC’s audience that “mobile video telephony will be among the first services - customers will be able to see each other while making a call.” In the event 3G was slow to arrive and few used it for video calls - that had to wait for the much higher speeds available from 4G networks.

Which is not to say that 5G won’t eventually enable all sorts of remote healthcare services. One example that is already happening is capsule endoscopy, taking a pill which looks inside you and can beam data to a doctor rather than going to the hospital for the kind of scan nobody looks forward to. Jon explains that a kit is delivered to the patient’s home: “You open up the box and it's all connected. You have a nurse on a video screen at the other end that tells you how to set it up.”

Despite the bumps in the road in the rollout of 5G Jayne remains excited by the potential it offers to transform healthcare: “My mind is blown on a daily basis about some of the technology that's out there that would be incredible to be able to use across health and care to support the staff and the patients and people in their own homes to be very much involved in their own care, avoiding the need to go into hospital.”

5G coverage across the West Midlands remains patchy and both Jon and Jayne are keen to emphasise that there is a cost to opposing a new mast in your neighbourhood. “

If we don't have those masts, it limits what we can do in connectivity generally, because often the 5G masts are carrying 4G too,” says Jon. “I don't think people realise that it's there to try and help - and mainly trying to help around health and social care.”

The old cliche is that we overestimate the impact of new technologies in the short term, underestimate it in the long term. This week saw the 50th anniversary of the first mobile phone call over a cellular network - and probably of the first health scare about phones too. It now feels like it is time to stop worrying and let the mobile connectivity revolution fulfil its promise of transforming our lives for the better in ways never imagined in 1973.