@Article{info:doi/10.2196/36824,
author="Berlet, Maximilian
and Vogel, Thomas
and Gharba, Mohamed
and Eichinger, Joseph
and Schulz, Egon
and Friess, Helmut
and Wilhelm, Dirk
and Ostler, Daniel
and Kranzfelder, Michael",
title="Emergency Telemedicine Mobile Ultrasounds Using a 5G-Enabled Application: Development and Usability Study",
journal="JMIR Form Res",
year="2022",
month="May",
day="26",
volume="6",
number="5",
pages="e36824",
keywords="5G; telemedicine; telehealth; eHealth; digital health; digital medicine; mobile ultrasound; ultrasound; imaging; digitalized medicine; emergency care; emergency; ambulance; slicing; diagnostic; diagnosis; image quality; field test",
abstract="Background: Digitalization affects almost every aspect of modern daily life, including a growing number of health care services along with telemedicine applications. Fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication technology has the potential to meet the requirements for this digitalized future with high bandwidths (10 GB/s), low latency (<1 ms), and high quality of service, enabling wireless real-time data transmission in telemedical emergency health care applications. Objective: The aim of this study is the development and clinical evaluation of a 5G usability test framework enabling preclinical diagnostics with mobile ultrasound using 5G network technology. Methods: A bidirectional audio-video data transmission between the ambulance car and hospital was established, combining both 5G-radio and -core network parts. Besides technical performance evaluations, a medical assessment of transferred ultrasound image quality and transmission latency was examined. Results: Telemedical and clinical application properties of the ultrasound probe were rated 1 (very good) to 2 (good; on a 6 -point Likert scale rated by 20 survey participants). The 5G field test revealed an average end-to-end round trip latency of 10 milliseconds. The measured average throughput for the ultrasound image traffic was 4 Mbps and for the video stream 12 Mbps. Traffic saturation revealed a lower video quality and a slower video stream. Without core slicing, the throughput for the video application was reduced to 8 Mbps. The deployment of core network slicing facilitated quality and latency recovery. Conclusions: Bidirectional data transmission between ambulance car and remote hospital site was successfully established through the 5G network, facilitating sending/receiving data and measurements from both applications (ultrasound unit and video streaming). Core slicing was implemented for a better user experience. Clinical evaluation of the telemedical transmission and applicability of the ultrasound probe was consistently positive. ",
issn="2561-326X",
doi="10.2196/36824",
url="https://formative.jmir.org/2022/5/e36824",
url="https://doi.org/10.2196/36824",
url="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35617009"
}