Design and Implementation of 5G e-Health Systems: Technologies, Use Cases, and Future Challenges

The fifth generation (5G) aims to connect massive amounts of devices with higher reliability, lower latency, and faster transmission speed, which are vital for implementing e-health systems. However, the current efforts on 5G e-health systems are still not enough to accomplish its full blueprint. In this article, we first discuss the related technologies from the physical layer, upper layer, and cross-layer perspectives on designing 5G e-health systems. We then elaborate two use cases according to our implementations (i.e., 5G e-health systems for remote health and 5G e-health systems for Covid-19 pandemic containment). We finally envision the future research trends and challenges of 5G e-health systems.