By Ian Smith, Head of UKTIN
Satellite connectivity is set to play an increasingly important role in enhancing healthcare services across the UK, particularly in remote and rural regions.
By providing ubiquitous coverage internet access, especially in hard to reach areas, satellite technology enables the delivery of critical medical services, supports emergency response teams, and facilitates innovative healthcare solutions.
The stimulus for innovation
The role of satellites and other non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) in improving the provision of healthcare services has been stimulated by decades of innovation in the UK.
The rising demand for wireless digital connectivity, for both consumer and business customers, has been the catalyst for innovation and investment by mobile network operators and vendors for the last three decades.
However, as each network generation has been developed and brought into service, it is increasingly evident that the complexity, cost, and power consumption, of both infrastructure and devices, has been increasing despite huge advances in technology.
These trends have resulted in a focus on delivering services into high density urban communities as a priority for operators, with the business case for deployment into rural areas becoming challenging, both from a cost and energy consumption perspective.
As the healthcare sector considers how digitisation can enhance efficiency and shift from a reactive to an anticipatory model of care, addressing the digital divide is more critical than ever.
Without equal access to digital tools, there is a risk that technological advancements will deepen, rather than bridge, existing health disparities.
For digital transformation to be truly inclusive, it is important to ensure ubiquity of coverage, enabling seamless access to services such as telemedicine, AI-driven diagnostics and remote patient monitoring across all communities.
Ian Smith
Without this foundational infrastructure, underserved populations will remain excluded from the benefits of digital healthcare, exacerbating health inequalities rather than reducing them.
This has brought the opportunity for the UK supply chain to innovate, and find new ways to improve connectivity, resilience, and enable new services across various sectors, with satellite communication and other NTNs a key part of this.
How satellites can help deliver healthcare services
When it comes to healthcare, satellite communications can play a major in delivering vital connectivity services for people living and working in remote communities and areas, with the UK providing a great proving ground for technological innovations.
There is evidently a global need to connect what is happening in hospitals and surgeries to the increasing focus on community-delivered services, supporting prevention, wellness management and long-term condition management.
Furthermore, with most healthcare systems under significant pressure, there is a universal need to reduce the load on ambulances and urgent care departments.
In addition, access to healthcare services can be a great challenge both for patients living in difficult-to-reach areas, with limited or no connectivity coverage, as well in emergency incidents, such as floods, earthquakes, etc.
The 5G ecosystem, combining the use of 5G and satellite connectivity (especially LEO satellites), constitutes a key enabler for the delivery of efficient and effective services within national health facilities such as hospitals, GP surgeries or semi-permanent mobile units as well as for peripatetic staff.
Moreover, satellite communication, providing access and backhaul links, can enable robust and resilient connectivity, and support healthcare delivery by providing access to medical services in remote and underserved areas, as well as areas affected by natural disasters.
NTNs like satellites can also support and enable remote diagnosis and treatment, telemedicine services, and remote monitoring of patients.
Ensuring mass adoption of NTNs
To ensure the mass adoption of NTNs in the UK, the UK Telecoms Innovation Network (UKTIN)’s NTN working group makes a number of recommendations to UK industry and the government.
For UK industry, working with 3GPP and other relevant standards entities to ensure end-to-end management plane capabilities are included in future standards, can be key in helping facilitate wider adoption.
In addition, UK industry should identify gaps and limitations in current standards that would slow down the mass adoption of NTN technology, and lobby relevant standard and regulatory bodies to fix these issues to keep pace with business trends.
For the government, when it comes to R&D with NTNs, setting up a Centre of Excellence in NTN for knowledge sharing between academia and industry, and preparations for inputs to standards, could have a major impact.
The government could also seek ways to raise the profile of NTN within the National Space Strategy. In addition, running collaborative programmes for developing, launching, and validating in-orbit/flight, the end-to-end service management capabilities required by the evolving market, can enable UK industry to develop world-leading insight and operational solutions.
Such actions would go a long way in helping further develop NTNs, with their integration into healthcare systems key to improving patient outcomes and providing vital access to care across all areas of the UK.
