By By Dan Hounsell

Speed is increasingly the name of the game for information technology in healthcare facilities, and, believe it or not, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is on the cutting edge of one promising advance.

In February 2020, the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in California became the first VA hospital — and one of the first hospitals in the world — to establish 5G connectivity, according to HealthTech. Along with agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense, the VA is testing 5G to develop and validate healthcare applications that could improve patient care.

In the U.S. healthcare sector, says Dr. Thomas Osborne, director of the VA’s National Center for Collaborative Healthcare Innovation, costs are growing, the population is aging, and there are not enough providers to deliver the same care as in the past.

Osborne says the solution lies in technology — in particular, 5G, which carriers have continued to roll out in small-scale launches since spring 2019. The technology supports diverse radio-frequency spectrum bands that have very high available bandwidth, and it speeds 10-100 times faster than those of 4G LTE, with latency cut to milliseconds.