How edge computing can transform healthcare

Health­care faces a dai­ly bat­tle with ris­ing demands, strained finances and the fall­out from the pan­dem­ic. Could “edge com­put­ing” be its sav­iour? 

The ter­mi­nol­o­gy lacks the charis­ma of a new vac­cine or won­der drug, or the polit­i­cal dra­ma of a multi­bil­lion-pound fund­ing pro­gramme. How­ev­er, it has sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial to tap the oceans of valu­able data wash­ing around health­care.

Edge com­put­ing is a phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture out­side a cloud set­up or cen­tral data sys­tem that enables staff to access and analyse data – patient and clin­i­cal infor­ma­tion – swift­ly, clean­ly and local­ly. The technology’s trans­for­ma­tive poten­cy comes from tak­ing the data gen­er­at­ed every day by hos­pi­tals, clin­ics and wear­ables and plac­ing it close to where it’s need­ed most, rather than in a cen­tral repos­i­to­ry where band­width and laten­cy are bar­ri­ers to its use.

Edge com­put­ing elim­i­nates laten­cy – the time tak­en to access the right data – and pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for faster response times and more com­pre­hen­sive insights. It could empow­er tech­nol­o­gy for at-home mon­i­tor­ing, telemed­i­cine and scaled-up vir­tu­al ser­vices, along with smart sys­tems and real-time diag­nos­tics. This is mis­sion crit­i­cal for the new care mod­els need­ed to alle­vi­ate the road­blocks that blight tra­di­tion­al reac­tive care.

Faster decision-making

The edge is prov­ing pow­er­ful across indus­try and retail, where it has a clear prof­it and loss impact. Ana­lysts Grand View Research pre­dict it will achieve a com­pound annu­al growth rate of 38.4% from 2021 to 2028.

Health sys­tems can be slow to adopt tech­nol­o­gy. How­ev­er, the edge is beguil­ing because it offers effi­cien­cies from using data smart­ly at source. It could also be a gate­way to new sys­tems like 5G net­works, aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) and vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR).

 “2021 is the year of the edge,” says Lau­ra Fos­ter, pro­gramme man­ag­er, tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion for techUK, the trade asso­ci­a­tion for tech inno­va­tors, com­pa­nies and organ­i­sa­tions. “We are gen­er­at­ing so much data and it doesn’t make sense to send it all to the cloud; it makes sense to process the data as soon as you can so it can be used where it is need­ed most.”

The boom in smart tech­nol­o­gy and wear­ables has cre­at­ed waves of data that can swamp con­ven­tion­al net­works and delay vital con­tent like X‑rays and MRI scans reach­ing clin­i­cians. Edge estab­lish­es local data net­works with easy access, lead­ing to ultra-fast diag­noses and deci­sion-mak­ing and lib­er­at­ing clin­i­cians from labo­ri­ous data-pro­cess­ing duties.

It’s gath­er­ing momen­tum across the NHS, although the cost of deploy­ing new hard­ware and soft­ware is a sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er. 

“It is going to be trans­for­ma­tive and I’m excit­ed about how it empow­ers the adop­tion of tech such as AR and VR in health­care,” adds Fos­ter. “It will be cru­cial over the next decade, deal­ing with the back­log caused by the pan­dem­ic and offer­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for care mod­els.”

Bet­ter mon­i­tor­ing of patients remote­ly and the use of telemed­i­cine can reduce the num­ber of hos­pi­tal admis­sions and allow agile ser­vices to thrive at local lev­el, she says, though progress will be tem­pered by the rav­ages of the pan­dem­ic.

Improving wellbeing 

These are ear­ly days for edge com­put­ing; it will take belief, invest­ment and upskilling to make sig­nif­i­cant progress. A report by Aru­ba, a wire­less net­work­ing sub­sidiary of Hewlett Packard, found that 92% of IT deci­sion mak­ers said they are miss­ing skills to unlock the pow­er of data, prin­ci­pal­ly in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and machine learn­ing.

Edge com­put­ing increas­es the amount of data being used and in cir­cu­la­tion, which can ele­vate cyber­se­cu­ri­ty risks. A report at the end of 2020 found that 57% of IT deci­sion mak­ers sur­veyed believed con­nect­ing IoT devices at the edge had or would make their busi­ness more vul­ner­a­ble.

David Wyn­d­ham Lewis, a for­mer NHS Trust chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer and now health and life sci­ences direc­tor, UK & Ire­land at infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Atos, says it is “an immense chal­lenge to find ways to assure secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy along­side expo­nen­tial­ly increas­ing data vol­ume and the decen­tral­i­sa­tion of the col­lec­tion of the data”. 

How­ev­er, edge com­put­ing address­es many of the bot­tle­necks to true dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in health­care, adds Wyn­d­ham Lewis. We’re “mov­ing into a world where every per­son is increas­ing­ly dig­i­tal­ly con­nect­ed by their phone or smart watch and those devices are cre­at­ing a tor­rent of clin­i­cal­ly valu­able data”, he says. A clin­i­cian can’t review or respond to this vol­ume of data, while cur­rent hos­pi­tal dig­i­tal sys­tems aren’t set up to process it. 

Atos is tak­ing part in a num­ber of schemes in the UK that use a range of mon­i­tors to help care for the elder­ly who may fall or wan­der off. Con­nect­ing those IoT devices and keep­ing the data local­ly is improv­ing care and response times.

“Edge com­put­ing pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve the care deliv­ered to an indi­vid­ual patient and pro­vide data that could be used for a wider good,” adds Wyn­d­ham Lewis. It helps move health­care from a reac­tive mod­el to one that focus­es on main­te­nance of well­be­ing, which is the only way to tack­le the demo­graph­ic shift while pro­vid­ing good and improv­ing qual­i­ty of care. 

 “For that to take place, we absolute­ly have to have that local deci­sion made or local intel­li­gence applied to the data. Oth­er­wise, our cur­rent health sys­tem and clin­i­cians will just be over­whelmed.”