# How 5G Wireless (and Concomitant Technologies) Will Revolutionize Healthcare?
## 5 Case Study: Economic Benefits of 5G-Enabled Healthcare Solutions
### Cost Saving with Mobile Health and Telemedicine  
Technology-enabled virtual care is the right solution to the rising burden of healthcare expenditure by tackling healthcare issues and reducing cost. The integrated healthcare systems by utilizing 4G LTE for e-Health and mHealth applications have sound economic benefits fuelled by the continuously increasing amount of smartphones and expeditiously improving connectivity. For example, the mobile-based health solution enables remote treatment and monitoring of chronic conditions and  
Figure 8: Distribution of health workers by level of health expenditure and burden of disease, by WHO region (adopted from: [55]).  
equips physicians to make better clinical decisions. In this way, mHealth can reduce the healthcare cost substantially. In a report on the European Union (EU), it is noted that mHealth solutions could save EUR99 billion in total annual healthcare spending and would add EUR93 billion to EU GDP in 2017 if mHealth is encouraged [54]. These savings equate to the treatment of an additional 24.5 million patients with the same number of doctors and facilities. Each year, mobile health-based remote monitoring of the elderly at home saves EUR2.4 billion in Sweden, EUR1.25 billion in Denmark and EUR1.5 billion in Norway [56].  
Telehealth serves as a low-cost clinic, extends clinical staff to other locations and provides a convenient, private and integrated diagnostic and treatment. The global telehealth market is growing rapidly; it accounted for revenue of $17,878.7 million in 2015, and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.7% during 2016-2022 due to increasing acceptance of the 4G and 5G spectrum [57]. GSMA Intelligence provides an overview of the market value of global digital health including telemedicine, mHealth, EHRs, etc. (see Figure 9).  
It can be seen from Figure 9 that the total market value is expected to grow from $60.8 billion in 2013 to $233.3 billion in 2020 [58]. According to the report by Deloitte on connected health, the telehealth hub across 210 homes can reduce 35% of hospital admissions, 53% use of accident and emergency department visits and 59% of hospital bed days [59]. Further, telehealth can save $100 a visit by reducing medical costs (81% of the reduction in medical costs) [60].  
Despite the tremendous increase in the mobile phone coverage and Internet access, 46.4% of the global population still lacks Internet access, and there are twice as many mobile-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in the developed world as in developing nations [61]. The 5G network has potential to significantly fill this gap by ensuring a consistent user experience ranging from dense areas to villages or even remote areas. In this way, the emerging healthcare applications (i.e., mHealth and e-Health) will be available in a much wider spread than today. This paves the path of telehealth and mHealth to be available nearly everywhere. Hence, health services will be available to people of remote areas like Sub-Saharan Africa where the average distance between a person and the nearest medical facility is five miles. It is projected that mobile health could save over one million lives in Sub-Saharan Africa over the next five years [46].