China Daily Weekly - 02.08.2019

ByYUANQUAN,JINGHUAIQIAO

andQUANXIAOSHUforXinhua

H

eart surgeon Guo Hui-

ming has a prescription

for what ailsChina’s

medical services: fifth-

generation, or 5G, technology.

Guo works at Guangdong Provin-

cial People’s Hospital, a leading med-

ical center in Guangzhou, capital of

Guangdong province.

The facility is pioneering the use

of 5G-assisted medical services that

enable its specialists to help with

delicate operations being performed

hundreds of kilometers away.

About 80 percent ofChina’s medi-

cal resources are concentrated in

large cities, such asBeijing and

Shanghai, and 80 percent of those

resources are in big public hospi-

tals, where patients flood in to see

eminent physicians. That can lead to

overcrowdingandsometimesstrains

doctor-patient relations.

Guo believes telemedicine via

superfast wireless technology will

help tackle the problem by allowing

more patients to receive high-qual-

ity treatment at clinics near their

homes.

Guo, 54, is a tech fan. He wears an

Apple Watch and speaksCantonese

to Siri on his iPhone.

Two months ago, he made head-

lines by using 5G technology via a

live video stream to direct minimally

invasive heart surgery on a patient

400 km away.

During the four-hour operation,

Guo, head of his hospital’s cardiac

surgery unit, sat in front of a big

screen and gave instructions using a

microphone and a 3D model of the

patient’s heart. However, he wore a

suit and tie, not traditional surgeon’s

garb.

Guo said only four doctors in his

team are capable of such surgery,but

last year, the team performed more

than 700 minimally invasive heart

operations.

This sort of surgery is difficult, but

demandisgrowing.Insteadofalarge

incision, the operation is performed

through tiny cuts in the patient’s

chest. Moreover, the surgeons don’t

sawthroughthebreastbone,butoper-

ate between the ribs, which results in

less pain and a faster recovery.

Before, Guo had to drive several

hours to remote county hospitals to

conduct operations, as well as to see

patients in Guangzhou.

“About 70 percent of my patients

arefromoutsideGuangzhou,”hesaid.

Yu Xueqing, president of the hos-

pital, likened its outpatients’ hall to a

crowdedsupermarket,becausethou-

sands of people pour in every day.

He said the congestion reduces

patient satisfaction and increases

the risk of infectious diseases, such

as dengue fever. That is a major

concern, because Guangdong expe-

rienced a serious outbreak of the

rapidly spreading mosquito-borne

illness five years ago.

For patients from distant rural

areas, traveling while ill can be chal-

lenging and time-consuming. “Some

die en route, unfortunately,” Yu said.

In the recent past, telemedicine

was mainly conducted via phone or

video. It was not common, mainly

because the poor technology led

to unstable signals, slow transfer

speeds and low definition, which

made it impossible for doctors to

oversee procedures remotely.

“B efore5G, we dared not conduct

remotesurgery,”Yusaid.“Evenatime

lag of just a few seconds between the

devices and the surgeons’ actions

could result in critical mistakes.”

With a data transfer speed at least

10 times faster than 4G technology,

5G has a time lag of just one-tenth

of a second. It has helped to inject

new vitality in county hospitals like

the People’s Hospital of Gaozhou in

southwestern Guangdong, which

performed more than 100 minimally

invasive operations last year.

Although excellent at treating

cardiovascular diseases, the hospital

still lags far behind provincial hospi-

tals in terms of quality of treatment.

For a recent operation on a 41-year-

old female patient, the Gaozhou hos-

pital invited Guo to provide advice

and guidance in real time through

its telemedicine platform.

Sitting in an operating room in

Guangzhou, a six-hour drive from

Gaozhou, Guo used a video marker

to highlight an area of the patient’s

body and told the lead surgeon to

move the cutting point 3 centimeters

higher to avoid damaging a nerve.

Without5Gtechnology,Guowould

have had to freeze the image to draw,

but the surgeon might have already

movedonorbeenunabletoseeclear-

ly,therebymissingGuo’sinstructions.

Local phone carrier Guangdong

Mobile and tech giant Huawei have

provided technical support for 5G

surgery.

Two weeks before the operation,

Guo’s team used a 5G connection to

build a 3D heart model using images

provided via a computerized tomog-

raphy, akaCT, scan, which produced

a 360-degree view of the heart.

County hospitals are not capable

of building 3D models. Previously,

gigabyte-sizedCT images had to be

transferred between hospitals by

hard drive or downloaded from the

internet over several hours, but it

now only takes a few minutes on the

5G network.

“We could see the (heart) deformi-

ties clearly. The 5G system helped to

reduce errors and improve efficien-

cy,” Guo said, adding that he believes

5G will help medical staff in remote

areas to master heart surgery faster.

Atrainee has to practice at least

100 times before becoming a lead

surgeoninaminimallyinvasiveoper-

ation. In times gone by, local medical

staff had few opportunities to learn

from well-trained surgeons, and the

county hospital only invited profes-

sionalsfromGuangzhoutohelpwith

operations four or five times a year.

The 5G-assisted services, which

come at a lower cost than previous

systems, can also help county hospi-

tals attract more patients.

He Yong, chief surgeon at the

countyhospitalinGaozhou,calculat-

ed that such an operation would cost

the patient 20,000 yuan ($2,900) if

performed by local staff members,

and another 10,000 yuan if special-

ists were involved.

However, if the patient chose to

have the surgery in Guangzhou, the

cost would rise to 40,000 yuan and

the family members would have

to make additional payments for

accommodationsandtravel, Hesaid,

adding that surgery via 5G requires

no extra payment.

Guangdong was in the vanguard

ofChina’s reform and opening-up

in the 1970s and ’80s, and today it is

home to many leading hospitals and

booming high-tech businesses.

The southern province is also a

pioneerofChina’shealthcarereform,

with efforts to develop a hierarchical

medical system and internet-based

treatment.

However, medical services in

remoteareasarestillfarfromsatisfac-

tory, while many county- and town-

ship-level hospitals lack advanced

equipment and well-trained staff.

Since 2017, Guangdong has invest-

ed 50 billion yuan to improve the

healthcare infrastructure in under-

developed regions, and has also

encouraged large hospitals to pro-

vide assistance with training.

According to the provincial health

authorities, the inpatient rate at

county hospitals reached 83.5 per-

cent last year. In Gaozhou, the rate

is 90 percent, indicating that more

patients now see doctors locally,

rather than traveling to big cities.

He Yong welcomed cooperation

with top hospitals through 5G tech-

nologies, but noted that county hos-

pitals have to spend more on high-

quality equipment. “It is still a chal-

lenge for us,” he said.

In May, doctors with theCancer

Center of Sun Yat-sen University

in Guangzhou used 5G to remotely

direct three operations in real time

in Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Gaozhou.

Liu Zhuowei, vice-president of the

center, said the move proved that

5G-assisted treatment is efficient.

Guo, the surgeon in Guangzhou,

expects 5G to provide greater surgi-

cal safety, but the main advantage

will be in having specialists from

large hospitals assisting more junior

colleagues elsewhere.

“I hope big hospitals will not be

overcrowded, and we will have more

time for research and treating criti-

cally ill patients,” he said.

Telemedicineviasuperfastwirelesstechnology

willdeliverhigh-qualitytreatmenttomorepatients

5G bringsadvances

forruralhealthcare

SurgeonsatthePeople’sHospitalinShitaicounty,Anhuiprovince,conductanoperationwiththehelp

oftheircounterpartsattheSecondHospitalofAnhuiMedicalUniversity,viaa5G-assistedmedical

servicesplatform.XUMINHAO/FORCHINADAILY

Fromleft:GuoHuiming,surgeonatGuangdongProvincialPeople’sHospitalinGuangzhou,Guangdong

province,directssurgerybyusinga3Dmodelofapatient’sheart;Doctorsatthehospitalprovidereal-

timeinstructionsforanoperationinGaozhou,4 00 kilometersaway,viaamultimediaroom.

PHOTOSBYZHANGJIAYANG/XINHUA

8 CHINANEWS August 2 -8, 2019 CHINADAILY GLOBAL WEEKLY