Impact of telecommunication network on future of telemedicine in healthcare: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Telemedicine is a combination of networking technologies and clinical data. The implementation of telemedicine has enhanced the regional distribution of resources, decreased the workforce of personnel, and shortened the space between healthcare staff and patients. Typically, the specialist doctors are settled and offer their services only in large urban areas. It is pertinent to reduce the imbalance of medical resources between urban and rural areas. The advent of telemedicine has the potential to address this issue. However, current telemedicine has its limitations in terms of data transfer and thus struggles to offer low latency in real-time applications. The recent developments in communication systems offer 5G and above connectivity. This study aims to analyze and synthesize the role of telecommunication networks for potential developments in the field of telemedicine. To this end, a systematic literature review has been conducted to address well-defined research questions. These questions aim to understand the working, flow, scope, and framework of the research area. This review provides an overview of telemedicine, the 5G-based telemedicine framework, and its comparison with the current system. It also discusses how the fast communication network (i.e., 5G and beyond 5G) with devices operating at low latency can revolutionize the healthcare system. Furthermore, a framework for future telemedicine has been provided along with potential application domains. Lastly, challenges and future directions beyond 5G have also been presented.