A major hospital in southwest China is teaming up with the country's largest telecommunications service provider to explore how cutting-edge technology can empower the medical industry.

The West China Hospital of Sichuan University in Chengdu is one of the leading medical institutions in southwest China's Sichuan Province. It has teamed up with China Mobile to offer medical services remotely with the help of 5G technology. The collaboration began on November 29 with surgeons who performed a tracheotomy on a 68-year-old patient at a suburban hospital in Chengdu under step-by-step guidance of two doctors 20 kilometers away at China West Hospital.

Guo Jun, an associate chief physician of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at West China Hospital who provided the guidance said that the low-latency characteristics of 5G enabled real-time remote instructions for medical staff to perform in the same way experienced doctors can.

"We can have them terminate any moves at any time without delay, which can effectively reduce risks in surgeries with a very small puncture space such as a tracheotomy," said Guo.

Medical experts say 5G technology can help narrow that gap by making remote diagnosis and surgery possible, and the growing presence of 5G in the medical community could shift the way healthcare is delivered. One example is the early detection of hidden health risks.

"The conditions of patients change rapidly, which means if the data transmitted from their end to ours gets delayed, that affects our judgment," said Kang Yan, director of Critical Care Medicine Department at West China Hospital, when referring to a platform called "ICU without boundaries" that the hospital has been developing to detect patients with potentially severe illnesses as early as possible.

"5G helps us to better analyze and diagnose more accurately and quickly," Kang said.

China Mobile initiated the plan to advance healthcare back in 2018, and they had the sense from the onset that 5G high bandwidth and low latency perfectly fit the time-critical needs of Intensive Care Units.

Li Jinyao, 5G project manager of the Chengdu Branch of China Mobile Sichuan, said China Mobile hopes that 5G+ digitization will facilitate the balancing of resources in the medical industry, empower grassroots hospitals in the central and western regions and improve their medical efficiency by leveraging the best medical resources of China's top-tier hospitals so that patients can get quality medical resources right at their doorstep.

Kang said the pandemic has helped facilitate remote diagnosis and treatment, and it can be replicated in other medical scenarios.

"When we further expand it, the quality medical resources of top echelon hospitals nationwide can be rapidly applied by grassroots hospitals," said Kang. "And this model is not limited by time or space, letting every critically-ill patient access the treatment they need can be become a reality."

Medical experts say in addition to 5G, other advanced technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence and cloud computing can also create new, life-saving possibilities in healthcare.