The BMBF-funded collaborative project 6G-life between the Technical University of Munich and the Technical University of Dresden will drive cutting-edge research for 6G communication networks. As a consistent further development of today's 5G and 4G standards, 6G offers new approaches to sustainability, security, resilience and latency and will strengthen the economy and thus digital sovereignty in Germany. The focus of 6G is on human-machine collaboration, creating the ideal conditions for healthcare applications. At Klinikum rechts der Isar, two medical use cases are being researched with the goal of integrating innovative 6G network concepts into clinical testbeds:
Context sensitive patient monitoring
In clinical practice monitoring is used to check the patient condition by using various sensors, for instance during a surgery. Currently, data transmission is usually cable-based to a local computer unit. In the 6G-life testbed, wireless, smart sensors of the next generation will be used within an intelligent network. Dynamic data routing can be used, for example, to decentralise complex analysis functions in a resource-optimised manner. Furthermore, a situation-adaptive data presentation to the end user is possible.
Semiautonomous telerobotic examination suite
The provision of medical expertise is limited in many areas of the world due to centralisation of health systems and poor infrastructure. There is also a shortage of specialised doctors and nurses. One goal of the 6G-life project is to reduce the imbalance between metropolitan and rural areas by establishing medical telepresence and high-precision telediagnostics. A prototypical demonstrator for a mobile telemedical system integrating 6G network concepts is to be developed, which is equipped for acute and elective diagnostics.
