Verizon, Emory Healthcare light up nation’s first 5G healthcare lab

Verizon and Emory Healthcare have entered into a strategic partnership to develop and test 5G Ultra Wideband-enabled use cases that could transform the healthcare industry.

As part of the partnership, Verizon lit up the Emory Healthcare Innovation Hub (EHIH) with 5G Ultra Wideband service, making it the nation’s first 5G healthcare innovation lab.

EHIH is a healthcare advancement and commercialization program committed to improving the patient care and provider experience.

EHIH does this by leveraging the 11TEN Innovation Partners’ “demand driven innovation” approach to solving the most pressing problems facing health care. Verizon will collaborate with Emory Healthcare and its nine Innovation Hub partners, including founding partner Sharecare, to help spur the development of healthcare solutions powered by 5G.

The massive bandwidth, super-fast speeds and ultra-low latency of Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network have the potential to help redefine patient care with real-time data analytics, giving researchers the ability to explore solutions such as connected ambulances, remote physical therapy and next-generation medical imaging.

EHIH will be able to test how 5G could enhance augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications for medical training, enable telemedicine and remote patient monitoring, and provide point of care diagnostic and imaging systems from the ambulance to the ER.

“The potential of Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband combined with mobile edge computing to transform healthcare is limitless,” said Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business Group. “Which is why Verizon is partnering with Emory to explore the 5G future of patient care. With 5G, doctors should be able to do things like create holographic 3D anatomical renderings that can be studied from every angle and even projected onto the body in the OR to help guide surgery.”

"The healthcare industry, driven by value-based care and increased consumerization, is set for a paradigm shift that will put a much greater focus on connectivity and access to data,” said Scott D. Boden, MD, Vice President for Business Innovation for Emory Healthcare. “Across every facet of healthcare, from care innovation to reimbursement model transformation to decentralization of care, speed to data is critical to the digital evolution of health,"

This engagement is part of Verizon’s broader strategy to partner with customers, startups, universities and large enterprises to explore how 5G can disrupt and transform nearly every industry.

Verizon operates five 5G Labs in the U.S. and one 5G Lab in London that specialize in developing 5G uses cases in industries ranging from health care to public safety to entertainment. While this is the first 5G lab Verizon has set up on-premises for a customer, it will be part of an ongoing initiative to co-develop 5G-related use cases to help customers transform their industries.

In addition to providing EHIH with 5G, Verizon will offer network and security services, project management, professional consulting services and managed infrastructure and sit on the Emory Hub Executive Advisory Board.