Dive Brief:
- Verizon is building a private 5G network at a new Cleveland Clinic facility in Ohio — one of the first projects in the U.S. where a hospital is being newly constructed with a 5G network embedded from the start, the company said this week.
- The Cleveland Clinic Mentor Hospital, scheduled to open in July, will explore a number of 5G-enabled capabilities in addition to bigger bandwidth, including patient check-in kiosks, enhanced digital displays and virtual reality for assisted surgery and imaging, according to the release.
- Verizon is not disclosing the cost of the project, but the company is implementing 5G in a service model so the hospital doesn’t have to provide upfront capital expenses, Gary Lynch, Verizon’s global practice lead for healthcare, told Healthcare Dive at the HIMSS conference in Chicago.
Dive Insight:
Verizon has installed 5G cells in VA facilities, some innovation labs and select floors in different health systems, but the Cleveland Clinic hospital represents the telecommunications provider’s first full 5G hospital installation, according to Lynch.
Telecoms companies like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are racing to build out their 5G infrastructures and nab new commercial markets, including in healthcare. AT&T says it is the first provider to install 5G in a U.S. hospital through a deal with Rush University in 2019 — a project that cost the hospital roughly half a million dollars per building, its CIO said at the time.
5G technology can handle 1,000 times more traffic and is up to 10 times faster than today’s 4G LTE networks — equivalent to downloading an HD movie onto a cellphone in less than a second. That could bring a lot of value to hospitals, through facilitating increased use of telemedicine, firmer patient control over personal health information, streamlined hospital communications and lower costs, experts say.
“A 5G infrastructure is needed because we need more bandwidth,” Lynch said. “The 5G bandwidth, it’s like this massive superhighway.”
Verizon has seen demand for 5G from hospital clients increase over the past few years, but providers remain skeptical, with a number of systems electing to wait and see the results of 5G installation at peer systems before they decide on the technology, he added.
“It’s overwhelming interest from the health systems today. Still skepticism, though,” as providers are uncertain about the value of the new technology, Lynch said.
Lynch said Verizon has also seen a lot of interest in 5G from pharmaceutical and medtech companies, due to how it can help infrastructure monitoring in the manufacturing space by predicting product quality.
