What will be the economic impact of 5G in healthcare. Report Tim

26 September 20213 years ago babelfish

Extract from the report “Smart Italy 5G – The benefits of 5G for the Italian economy”, by the Tim study center

Numerous studies have tried to address the impact of 5G on the economy by analyzing the costs, benefits and socio-economic impacts. The forecasts on which the models adopted to produce the estimates are based are based on conservative assumptions, in a perfect scenario (eg 5G coverage) and aiming at maximizing the benefits that can be obtained.

Investments in 5G have a "multiplier" effect on the whole economy. Using estimates based on linear extrapolation, recent studies (study by the European Commission – Identification and quantification of the main socio-economic data to support strategic planning for the introduction of 5G in Europe – year 2016) argue that by 2025 the investment per 5G user will be equal to 145 €. Such important investments have cascading effects on the whole economy due to the interdependencies between the different sectors: these effects have been studied through the input-output analysis.

The effects of the introduction of 5G can be classified into:

The direct effects are those that derive from the investment made in 5G infrastructures and services by telecommunications operators.
The indirect effects are the increase in production in the supply chain by infrastructure suppliers
The induced effects are produced by the higher expenses of households which benefited from an increase in disposable income thanks to the increase in production in all sectors affected by the specific investments.

In the field of health, the benefits produced by 5G have been calculated in 4 contexts:

Prevention: monitoring patients through wearable devices connected in 5G (e.g. smartwatch, smartwrist, smartphone) allows to implement a model of medicine based on prevention and not on treatment, triggering significant savings to the NHS.
Chronic Diseases: Connected medical devices (Internet of Medical Things – IoMT) that monitor and treat chronic diseases could provide savings in health care costs for long-term care.
Consumers: Consumers can share their personal and medical data from wearable devices with private insurers to gain health policy benefits
Drug testing: The pharmaceutical industry is a third party that has a significant interest in healthcare. IoT has the potential to monitor drug trials more closely, to provide additional investigator health information that can show potential side effects at an early stage, and to monitor results more closely.

ECONOMIC BENEFITS ON PREVENTION

The European Commission estimates a containment of health care costs from 2.6% to 3.7% of which 5% attributable to 5G, which corresponds to annual savings of € 150 million in Italy and € 1,227 billion in Europe.

ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF MONITORING CHRONIC DISEASES

The European Commission estimates a 10% containment of public health costs, 5% of which can be attributed to 5G, which in Italy translates into annual savings of € 800 million on the NHS.

ECONOMIC BENEFITS FOR THE CONSUMER

The European Commission estimates that the adoption of wearable devices leading to a reduction in insurance premiums, of which 5% can be attributed to 5G. With the data currently available, it can be said that in Italy this will result in a benefit for consumers of € 32 million per year in savings on policies against an expense of € 111 billion (Source: IVASS Report, 2019).

ECONOMIC BENEFITS FOR THE EXPERIMENTATION

The benefit deriving from 5G technology is also consequent to the use of wearable devices that would allow more effective monitoring in the Phase 3 testing phase of drugs which, in the context of Research & Development activities, weighs 32% on the total costs: according to the European Commission would save 15% of which 5% would be attributable to 5G. The expected savings are € 86 million in Europe and € 4 million in Italy.

CONCLUSIONS

The estimated advantages are, conservatively, only a part of those achievable with new technologies while the introduction of new business models will certainly bring additional resources to the economy. The benefits so far assessed with this method can be summarized in the chart below. The economic advantage for the Italian system is close to € 1 billion per year.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/quale-sara-limpatto-economico-del-5g-nella-sanita-report-tim/ on Sun, 26 Sep 2021 04:39:30 +0000.