In 2020, UK Healthcare spend accounted for 12.8% of GDP, £269 billion. The NHS alone employs 1.6 million people, treating millions of patients and supporting further millions of citizens in need of help and guidance. Significant injections of additional Government funding were required to help adapt service delivery models and meet increased demand for services related to the pandemic.

Amid Covid-19, the health and social care sectors have introduced new and innovative ways to operate safely and efficiently—yet new challenges have emerged related to treatment delays, on-going infection risk and increased demand on services such as mental health and wellbeing.

5G has the potential to support innovation in these areas and across the sectors as a whole: facilitating more efficient and effective ways of working. Globally, developed economies share these challenges while emerging economies continuously face extremely challenging conditions and ongoing shortages of skilled workforce, further enhanced by pandemic fallout. Health and Care service delivery has seen an acceleration towards community services (treatment and management away from hospitals)  meaning increased reliance on data and communication systems both in wireless tech and  wired connectivity formats.

5G has great potential to replace and enhance such connectivity and much more besides. It may prove to be a key platform to underpin the innovation in  adjacent  technologies and in ‘best practice’, which will become necessary to build sustainable health, care (and increasingly wellbeing and preventative) service designs for the future.

This series of events will be of interest to anyone involved in contemporary health and care service design or delivery.