Innovating with 5G for healthcare

Region Stockholm and Telia explore how to improve patient safety, healthcare quality, and efficiency with 5G Standalone.

Improving the patient healthcare journey

5G Standalone technology can improve healthcare services both inside and outside hospitals. Through the NorthStar innovation program, Telia and Ericsson are collaborating with Region Stockholm, a public sector organization, to explore how 5G could improve the patient healthcare journey. Ericsson’s market-unique 5G Advanced location services and network slicing are used to test multiple use cases.

Case

Region Stockholm, a public sector organization responsible for healthcare, public transport, and regional development in Stockholm County, is partnering with Telia in an innovation project to explore how 5G can enhance healthcare services. The initiative, called the 5G Mobile Health Innovative solutions (5GMHI project), is co-funded by the European Union from 2024 to 2027. The project is taking place at the hospital Södersjukhuset in central Stockholm, Sweden. The hospital employs about 5,000 people and manages 130,000 emergency cases each year, making it one of the busiest emergency care facilities in the country.

The project is supporting the patient care journey with 5G healthcare solutions and tests clinical use cases where 5G can improve efficiency, enhance patient safety, and improve treatment. This spans the entire care journey—from the incident site and ambulance communications to emergency department services—and onward inside the hospital. The project is also testing how 5G can optimize hospital services, from locating medical equipment to improving facility and energy management.

The 5GMHI project tests the capabilities of 5G technology in a hospital environment while exploring future use cases and its potential as a platform for innovation.

Using 5G Standalone (5G SA) technologies in healthcare has the potential to enable a wide range of innovative capabilities that can enhance the patient care journey. It could support both indoor hospital applications and outdoor services—connecting people, vehicles, equipment, and other critical assets.

The tested use cases in this project in Stockholm, Sweden include:

Flying drones to stream live video from incident locations (using 5G standalone with network slicing to support drone control and live video streaming).
Delivering defibrillators to emergency sites using drones (using 5G standalone with network slicing to support drone control and operational connectivity).
Enabling real-time 5G video communication between ambulances and hospital emergency departments (using 5G SA with network slicing).
Providing precise indoor location services to help staff locate medical equipment in large hospital facilities (using 5G Advanced location services with precise indoor positioning).
Deploying sensors for facility and property management (using the 5G indoor network to connect IoT sensors).

The outdoor and indoor mobile network is built on Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core, Ericsson Network Location, Ericsson Radio Dot System for indoor coverage, Ericsson 5G Radio Access Network for macro coverage, Ericsson Service Orchestration and Assurance, and Ericsson Network Manager.

Magnus Leonhardt, Head of Strategy and Innovation, Telia B2B

"With one of the world's most advanced 5G networks, we can enable unbroken care chains within healthcare"

A large-scale hospital facility houses thousands of beds, pieces of medical equipment, and specialized medical devices. Today, staff spend considerable time locating stretchers and equipment that have been moved between departments. It is critical that these assets can be located quickly when needed. By attaching 5G Internet of Things (IoT) devices to equipment, assets can be tracked and found both inside hospital buildings and outdoors. Staff will be able to access real-time location information through an application on a smartphone, tablet or laptop. Efficient asset tracking also helps reduce inventory costs.

A 5G SA network can enable seamless, real-time location tracking of 5G devices across both indoor and outdoor environments using Ericsson’s market-unique 5G Advanced location solution. The location tests in this hospital project show that equipment can be located within a few meters, making it easy to find.

To accelerate emergency response, the project is testing how the Emergency Medical Communications Center can deploy a drone as a first responder to provide an immediate overview of the situation at the incident site. The drone streams live video to the Emergency Medical Communications Center, enabling operators to assess the situation, determine the resources required, and coordinate rescue efforts more effectively. Drones can also be used to deliver critical medical equipment, such as defibrillators, before an ambulance arrives. Reliable drone operations and high-quality video streaming are enabled through 5G network slicing and connection to the 5G macro network.

Real-time 5G video communication is being tested between ambulances and the emergency department at the hospital Södersjukhuset in Stockholm. Live video from the ambulance is displayed in the emergency department, allowing doctors and medical staff to assess the patient’s condition before arrival and support treatment decisions during transport.

By providing earlier access to critical patient information, the service can help hospital staff prioritize cases, prepare the appropriate treatment, engage the right specialists, and ensure the necessary equipment is ready upon arrival. This can reduce time-to-care and support better patient outcomes. High-quality video communication is enabled through 5G network slicing and connection to the 5G macro network.

About NorthStar

NorthStar is a joint innovation program by Telia and Ericsson that gives Swedish organizations early access to advanced 5G capabilities in real-world environments.

By combining Telia’s purpose-built 5G network with Ericsson’s cutting-edge 5G technologies, the program enables partners to test, develop, and validate new solutions at scale. NorthStar helps accelerate the path from research to commercialization and supports innovations designed to scale beyond Sweden.