In this digital era, everyday evolving technology is revolutionizing human’s experience of the surrounding world. One of such technological advances is telecom services. More advanced is the telecom technology, strongly connected is the digital world. When evolving telecom services are improving experiences in areas of entertainment, fun, education and business; healthcare domain has also not remained untouched. 5G telecom services are helping the healthcare sector to develop new protocols and set of services in order to establish smart healthcare gateways. Online healthcare consultation, observations or monitoring and follow ups are something quite common these days. One of the crucial areas of healthcare is neurological treatment and patient care. 5G telecom services are aiding this process thus making remote health care of neurological patient care possible.

Neurological examination using telemedicine

Telemedicine services are effective in both neurological assessments as well as remote monitoring of neurological patients such as Alzheimer, Parkinson, dementia and more. In case of first time patients, almost all the processes of neurological examination are possible using telemedicine.  The virtual neurological examination of patients including coordination, sensation, eye movements, tongue movements, sitting balance, gait, power, deep tendon reflexes and plantar responses yields fair to moderate results when compared to the face-to-face neurological exam results. Telemedicine examinations were more sensitive in detecting neurological abnormalities in comparison to the conventional face-to-face neurological examinations. Additionally it attested that the neurological examination conducted using telemedicine gives results as good as face-to-face examination conducted by a junior doctor¹.

Neurological patient care using IoMT and 5G telecom service

In most of the neurological disorders or disease cases, patients need prolonged and intensive care as neurological dysfunctions interfere from complex tasks performed by an individual like calculation and planning to simple daily living tasks such as bathing and eating. Thus, neurological dysfunctions demand intensive and regular care. 5G telecom usage is improving network and connectivity across the globe; it is also assisting better remote monitoring solutions. In the process of remote monitoring of neurological patients, the Internet of medical things (IoMT) is playing a crucial role. IoMT is a network of physical objects, medical devices, clinicians, machines and applications which paves an effective way to telemedicine practice and effective remote monitoring of the health condition of patients². Thus, a perfect combination of IoMT and mobile technology helps in remote, continuous and real time monitoring of patients.

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a form of in-home patient care service which is delivered with the help of IoMT devices, applications and telecom services. It uses wearable equipment and wearing devices with integrated circuits and connectivity technology to monitor and save patient data for analysis and healthcare purposes in future. The remote monitoring devices include non-invasive remote devices to measure or detect common physiological processes and non-invasive monitoring devices used for wireless transmission of patient information to the healthcare provider. IoMT devices include smartphones, consumer electronics, tablets and wearable devices that are capable of IoT communications. These devices are basically embedded with IoMT sensors to encode and transfer information. Summarizing, a set of interconnected home based IoMT devices along with different applications and telecom services develops a virtual connection between the healthcare organization/ institution or clinician and neurological patient.