Business News/ Special Report / Hospital CIOs Weigh 5G as Digitized Medicine Pushes Wi-Fi to Its Limits
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A profusion of connected devices and data-intensive processes in healthcare is forcing hospital CIOs to evaluate alternatives to their existing Wi-Fi networks, which are pushing ever closer to their limits.
A profusion of connected devices and data-intensive processes in healthcare is forcing hospital CIOs to evaluate alternatives to their existing Wi-Fi networks, which are pushing ever closer to their limits.
For years, hospitals have relied on Wi-Fi, where connectivity depends on the amount and strategic placement of networking hardware. It’s a setup chief information officers say can be difficult to scale at the pace of galloping bandwidth demands.
For years, hospitals have relied on Wi-Fi, where connectivity depends on the amount and strategic placement of networking hardware. It’s a setup chief information officers say can be difficult to scale at the pace of galloping bandwidth demands.
Taking a page from newly automated warehouses and factories, some hospital CIOs are testing and evaluating private networks that run on high-speed 5G wireless cellular technology and other hybrid private-public 5G systems, which they say could be expanded more quickly across hospital campuses than traditional Wi-Fi.
“Speed and scalability of a network is going to become more demanding with new technologies that are emerging," said Scott Arnold, chief digital and innovation officer at Tampa General Hospital. Specifically, he called out the amount of extended reality and virtual reality increasingly being used in teaching, including surgical training.
The benefits of private 5G networks, which rely on signals from cellular sites, could be likened to those of cloud computing, Arnold said. Rather than maintaining its own physical Wi-Fi infrastructure, the hospital would outsource connectivity to a major carrier, and be able to scale up and down quickly based on demand, he said.
“Our Wi-Fi network is limited by the amount of circuits that we purchase," Arnold said, adding that getting that physical hardware in place can have long lead times.
While Wi-Fi has thus far held up, evolving medical technology could change that. Medical records are increasingly becoming electronic and accessed by professionals via laptops and iPads as they move around the hospital. A growing number of medical devices, such as intravenous pumps, are internet-connected. And bandwidth-intensive emerging technology, such as virtual and augmented reality as well as new applications of artificial intelligence, are slowly making their way into hospitals.
Tampa General is currently building a new pavilion, slated to open in 2027. Arnold is considering whether a private 5G network, rather than Wi-Fi, should be its primary point of connection, he said. Traditional Wi-Fi will still be installed as a backup in any case, he added.
Even so, it could be a while before 5G is widely adopted by hospitals—many medical devices don’t run off it. For hospitals in particular, cybersecurity concerns could be a barrier, said Venky Ananth, senior vice president and global head of healthcare at information technology consulting firm Infosys. Providers like T-Mobile aver that private 5G is more secure than Wi-Fi, but some CIOs remain wary.
At Boston Children’s Hospital, CIO Heather Nelson said she has been working with T-Mobile to build a hybrid 5G environment, which would support both secure hospital traffic as well as general public connections, but with the idea that Wi-Fi would remain as a backup.
“We knew our current legacy systems couldn’t scale," she said. With new technology coming, she added, “We knew that we needed to shift our clinical mobility strategies, why not do it and why not make sure that it’s scalable and that we can grow with it, and that it can grow with us." She added that she’s had conversations with many medical device manufacturers that are embedding 5G capabilities in their products.
5G promises to cover the hospital’s 3 million square-foot campus more dependably than Wi-Fi, she said. Wi-Fi can also cover wide areas if there are enough access points, she said, but users moving between those points can find themselves with pokey service—signals that go dim in stairwells or long hallways, for instance.
For hospital staff, it’s a source of frustration.
“Wi-Fi won’t go away," Nelson said, “but I’m trying to create a more ubiquitous and reliable platform." Testing of the 5G system so far has gone well, she added.
But in some quarters, Wi-Fi is still handling the digital load with no need for an upgrade. Craig Richardville, chief digital and information officer at Intermountain Health, commented that 5G solutions are “a little on the bleeding edge" for healthcare. Wi-Fi is working well for the Salt Lake City, Utah-based health system, he said.
To the extent Richardville is evaluating 5G for the future, he’s thinking about cost, device-readiness and cybersecurity, he said. Currently, Intermountain operates a number of segmented Wi-Fi networks independent of each other, which provides a higher level of security and less competition for critical services: for instance, patients and their families don’t log into the same network that’s crunching medical data.
“We don’t want to put in a technology just because it’s cool and because it’s new," said Richardville. It has to deliver, he added, whether it’s “a better quality, better price, a better experience."
Write to Isabelle Bousquette at isabelle.bousquette@wsj.com
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