The concept of the IoMT involves healthcare providers using edge computing and connected devices such as remote monitoring sensors and surgical robotics to improve patient care, staff productivity, and operational efficiency.
Juniper’s projection equates to 3,850 devices being deployed in each smart hospital, representing a 131% increase from 2021 when 3.2m devices were deployed.
Adoption of remote monitoring technologies accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic significantly. This is a trend which the Juniper researchers believe will continue over the next five years, as patients become more acclimated to remote monitoring and see benefits from proactively managing and treating health conditions.
The Smart Hospitals report went on to suggest that the real-time nature of remote monitoring requires low latency, high bandwidth connections to ensure transmission of patients’ health data is not interrupted or distorted and recommended smart hospital vendors develop partnerships with network operators.
Report author Adam Wears said: “The emergence of remote monitoring within healthcare presents an opportunity for network operators to place themselves within the digital healthcare value chain.
“Smart hospital technologies generate significant quantities of data, meaning that the edge computing function provided by network operators will be crucial to the successful roll-out of these systems.”
Huawei recently collaborated with the government of Thailand to launch a new 5G smart hospital project at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok, which it claims is the first-of-its-kind. Juniper’s research found that smart hospitals in the US and China are the leading adopters of IoMT devices accounting for 21% and 41% of connected devices by 2026.
The use of smart hospital technology is also on the rise in the UK where West Midlands 5G last year announced the launch of a collaborative trial which will see patients use a 5G-connected device at home to detect if they could have bowel cancer.
