GE Healthcare inaugurates its first '5G Innovation Lab' in India

Bengaluru: GE Healthcare has announced the launch of its 5G Innovation Lab in India, the first for GE Healthcare across the globe. With the advantage of massive bandwidth, high data speeds, low latency, and highly reliable connectivity, 5G has the potential to disrupt the patient care continuum, transforming diagnosis, therapy, and prognosis. The 5G Innovation Lab is designed to position GE Healthcare at the forefront of these groundbreaking advances in patient care, including potentially bringing cutting-edge technology to rural and sub-urban regions.

The lab is situated at the John F. Welch Technology Centre (JFWTC) Bengaluru, GE Healthcare's largest R&D centre outside of the USA, the lab will serve as a testbed to develop future-ready products and solutions, turning a new corner in innovation. It houses state-of-the-art infrastructure, including a private 5G network for testing and development. It provides expertise as well as a platform for a collaborative ecosystem for academia, the healthcare industry, and startups, facilitating exploration and enabling validation and qualification of 5G-enabled Precision Healthcare use cases.

5G in Healthcare was valued at an estimated USD 215 million in 2021 and projected to reach USD 3,667 million by 2026. This high-speed connectivity has the potential to advance Point-of-Care services by pushing the boundaries of tele-health, remote health monitoring/diagnosis, real-time remote image processing, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). 5G could act as a key catalyst for transforming the patient experience by enabling rapid collection and transmission of large data files and real-time, high-definition video, which can support quicker analytical insights and streamline clinical decision-making. In the broadest sense, 5G could significantly accelerate improvements in the quality of medical care and reduce the burden of healthcare costs.

"The healthcare industry, driven by value-based patient care, is at a turning point that will put a greater emphasis on connectivity and accessibility. As the world is transforming digitally, it's important for us to ensure we don't miss out on lifesaving, critical information. India is an important market for us globally and it is indeed the right time to venture into 5G, which will open a realm of exciting opportunities, driving the next wave of growth in Healthcare," said Jan Makela, President and CEO, Imaging at GE Healthcare.

The GE Healthcare 5G Innovation Lab will serve as a conduit for the interplay of exponential technologies like AI/ML, IoT, Big Data, Edge Computing and Cybersecurity.

"At GE Healthcare, we are using our clinical expertise and know-how to deliver integrated, efficient, and highly personalized care and advance precision health. At our 5G Innovation Lab, our lead scientists and technologists will research and develop solutions for the most pressing healthcare issues, for India and the world. This lab will play a pivotal role in helping us build an ecosystem to explore 5G-enabled use cases and leapfrog into the next generation of MedTech," added Girish Raghavan, Vice President, Engineering, GE Healthcare.

Researching the use cases of 5G connectivity is critical to exploring its potential to provide quality healthcare to rural and sub-urban regions in India and across the world. High-speed connectivity will help connect smaller clinics to larger specialty hospitals or radiology centers, which is especially important as care is becoming more distributed. GE Healthcare's 5G Innovation Lab aims to explore and drive this accelerated trend, streamlining the continuum of care and supporting the patient journey. 5G-powered Augmented and Virtual Reality are also key to training physicians from doctors and nurses to interns, enabling them to visualize procedures in a more engaged, learning-by-doing manner. Better healthcare delivery depends on better diagnosis services made available and accessible worldwide at an early stage and the 5G Innovation Lab is designed to facilitate progress and, ultimately, improve lives.