Zhengzhou University First Affiliated Hospital, China Mobile, and Huawei Launch World’s First Elastic-Slicing Full-Scenario 5G SA Smart Healthcare Private Network

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that on October 18, 2019, the National Engineering Laboratory for Internet Medical Systems and Applications of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University (hereinafter referred to as the “National Engineering Laboratory”), in collaboration with China Mobile Group Henan Co., Ltd., China Mobile Chengdu Industrial Research Institute, and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., jointly held a press conference titled “Press Conference on the Full-Scenario 5G SA Smart Healthcare Private Network Based on Elastic Slicing.” At the event, research progress and the latest achievements regarding the 5G SA smart healthcare private network were announced. This newly launched 5G SA smart healthcare private network is the first 5G industry-specific private network in China—and indeed globally—to feature full-scenario, cross-regional coverage based on elastic slicing. It provides critical network support for the implementation of innovative 5G applications across various vertical industries and for the incubation of new business models.

The healthcare industry is a key focus area for the development of 5G+ industrial applications. Traditional healthcare systems face prominent challenges, including long network deployment cycles, unstable networks under multi-service concurrency, low security in medical data transmission, and inflexible networks due to the binding of bandwidth to specific services. As a new generation of digitally converged network, 5G, with its characteristics of high capacity, low latency, and large bandwidth, meets the urgent demand for network performance in emerging healthcare service models such as mobile healthcare, telemedicine, internet-based healthcare, and smart healthcare.

Leveraging the National Development and Reform Commission’s “5G Telemedicine Application Demonstration Project,” the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, as a 5G healthcare industry demonstration partner for China Mobile and Huawei, took the lead in launching a regionally coordinated 5G telemedicine experimental network across China. It has implemented demonstration applications in various medical services, including mobile healthcare, VR-based remote teaching, remote emergency care, remote ultrasound, and remote surgical proctoring, thereby spearheading the development of 5G healthcare applications nationwide.

The newly released 5G SA Smart Healthcare Private Network adheres to the 3GPP international telecommunications standards. Built upon the 5G Standalone (SA) core network, it employs technologies such as wireless soft slicing, dual-registration base stations, hard slicing in the transport network, and independent bearer in the core network. This solution proposes a 5G healthcare private network framework featuring network adaptability, perceptibility, and intelligent O&M, tailored for comprehensive medical scenarios spanning “intra-hospital, inter-hospital, and extra-hospital” settings. It achieves secure isolation between the healthcare private network and public user networks, thereby significantly meeting the performance and security requirements of healthcare industry users for 5G private networks.

The 5G SA medical private network no longer relies on 4G and constitutes a fully independent 5G network. Compared to current 4G networks, the 5G SA network architecture represents a disruptive transformation. The application of MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) and network slicing technologies enables true dynamic bandwidth awareness, isolation of different services, and dynamic allocation of network performance, thereby meeting the customized requirements of various vertical industries for 5G private networks.

Field comparative tests conducted on the 5G SA medical private network and the 5G NSA network at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University demonstrated that, under intra-hospital and cross-district interconnection conditions with a 1 Gbps network slice, download speeds exceeded 900 Mbps, upload speeds exceeded 180 Mbps, and the average user latency was 8 ms. Under high network load conditions, conventional service speeds decreased by more than 60%, and maximum latency increased by over sixfold. In contrast, all quality-of-service (QoS) indicators for services within the 5G medical private network remained normal, with uplink bandwidth assurance reaching 95%, downlink bandwidth assurance exceeding 90%, and latency assurance reaching 99%.

It is worth noting that the 5G SA medical private network released this time was built based on China Mobile’s existing 5G network, which reduced the construction costs of 5G medical private networks and promoted the industrialization, standardization, and commercialization of 5G industry-specific private networks. This development holds milestone significance for the advancement of 5G smart healthcare applications and represents a critical step toward achieving the integration of 5G with vertical industries and fostering innovation in industrial applications.

Technological innovation has brought about profound changes in the industry. The newly released 5G SA (Standalone) Smart Healthcare Private Network, centered on the needs of the healthcare sector and built upon 5G technology, lays a solid network foundation for the deep integration of 5G smart healthcare from laboratories and demonstration environments into real-world clinical applications. It sets a benchmark for the deployment of 5G medical private networks across hospitals in China, significantly promoting integrated collaboration in diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, management, and services. This advancement drives the healthcare industry toward networked, informatized, and intelligent development, creating endless possibilities for the implementation and industrial incubation of innovative smart healthcare services such as “Virtual Hospitals” and “Virtual Doctors.”