5G may only be useful for commercial applications

Environmentally friendly 5G tower in a residential area

I was about to update information about 5G applications in health care.  Very few cellphone users will need to use 5G, so at this point, there is no good reason for most people to purchase a new phone with 5G unless their current phone is dying.  5G will be useful if you download videos or movies.  The speed increase is monumental.  For plain voice or text, it is not cost-effective.
Hospitals now require. high bandwidth to gather data for monitoring patients in multiple locations. Robotic equipment, mobile carts, and other equipment requiring geolocation with be dependent upon 5G

This includes the IoT (Internet of Things) such as monitoring temperatures through a facility, freezers, medication expiration dates, and air quality monitoring.

Your location will be a major limiting factor for accessibility to 5G. The new 5G cell towers will use previous towers already in use, to begin.  It is a simple economic equation. 5G transmitting antennas will be in commercial areas, or regions that will need high-speed data for daily operations, such as data centers, large companies with multiple locations to track inventory, and sales in real-time.

Imagine going to BestBuy to purchase an 80-inch OLED Smart TV. Your sales associate tells you he is sorry but he is out those TVs (they are selling like hotcakes at a Sunday morning pancake breakfast before church services. Instead of having to walk over to his computer terminal to search for your model, he pulls out his smartphone (5G) and will have instantaneous access to the companies warehouses, inventory, and date of any new shipment.  When you walked into BestBuy either an RFID NFC picked up your identification and payment method (if you opted in for that feature).  All of that data was stored and verified by smartphone verification, email voice, or text depending upon your check out.

Not only will this enhance B2C, but it will also facilitate B2B transactions such as bidding for bulk purchases.  The middlemen may be eliminated entirely resulting in lower costs to retail.

Barriers to 5G such as the appearance of new cell towers and the fear of the effects of more exposure to microwave energy due to the necessity of more antennas are also considerations for public health.

Large 5G antenna array

Repurposed Light Pole with 5G Antenna

Large Refrigerator Sized 5G antenna (butt ugly)


So much for 5G.  My inside sources from a very reliable source tell me that Amazon is starting a new division (Kuiper), Apple is spouting off about Apple-Fi.  Starlink is up and running with a beta in the Northern United States and part of Canada.  Initially, Starlink is available to customers in the lower half of Canada and the northern United States (or what SpaceX CEO Elon Musk calls the “upper latitudes” that are between 45- and 53-degrees latitude)

The only company well along with disseminating Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations is Starlink. Apple FI and Amazon's Kuiper LEO service are at least several years in the future.  Developing the hardware and software is already accomplished. The bottleneck will be space launch systems.  At this point the only economic launch system is SpaceX,  using reusable launch vehicles.

Our niche here in the Digital Health Space, and what will all this futuristic application will mean to health care.?  There are large parts of the United States that still do not have broadband and are dependent on obsolete DSL which is useless for telehealth and remote monitoring.  Rural practitioners and rural hospitals are at a deep disadvantage.  Large health systems are also disadvantaged by their rural hospitals and or clinics.

Hospitals and clinics are just now adopting 5G for internal connectivity between the monitoring, inventory, and supply chain.  There is probably a use factor for many operational features in hospitals.  As CTOs and CIOs become more educated in these technologies they will demand these advances.