Private 5G has been discussed for years across manufacturing, ports, mining, logistics and other industrial environments. Healthcare has generally received less attention, perhaps because hospitals do not immediately look like the sort of places where a private mobile network would be needed. That may be starting to change.
A recent NTT DATA article describes Private 5G as potentially becoming the hospital's new "nervous system". The analogy is interesting. Modern hospitals increasingly depend on wireless connectivity for patient monitoring, medical equipment, electronic observations, imaging, communications, asset tracking, security cameras and a growing range of Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices. At the same time, doctors, nurses, equipment and sometimes patients are continuously moving around the hospital.
This does not mean that hospital Wi-Fi has suddenly stopped working, nor that every medical device needs 5G. In fact, that distinction may be one of the reasons healthcare is becoming an interesting Private 5G use case. Hospitals potentially need several complementary wireless technologies rather than one network trying to do everything.
Wi-Fi remains perfectly suitable for laptops, tablets, administrative systems, patients, visitors and many other applications. Bluetooth, RFID and technologies such as LoRaWAN can make far more sense for low-data-rate sensors and asset tracking. Public mobile networks remain essential for general connectivity and for maintaining communications outside the hospital campus.
Private 5G, typically deployed as a Mobile Private Network (MPN), starts to become interesting where the requirement combines mobility, controlled access, predictable connectivity, wide-area indoor and outdoor coverage, local processing and applications that the hospital does not want competing with ordinary wireless traffic.
NTT DATA points to the growing number of connected systems inside hospitals, including infusion pumps, smart beds, ventilators, telemetry devices, real-time location systems and computer-vision cameras. Its proposed architecture is not actually to remove Wi-Fi, but to create a separate Private 5G layer for selected clinical devices and applications while leaving Wi-Fi in place for everyday connectivity.
That distinction is important. Some claims made around Private 5G and healthcare can become unnecessarily dramatic. Modern Wi-Fi, particularly Wi-Fi 6/6E and Wi-Fi 7, can support very dense environments and sophisticated enterprise networking. Similarly, installing Private 5G does not magically guarantee flawless coverage or eliminate every reliability problem. Radio planning, redundancy, backhaul, device support and operational processes still matter.
The more useful question is therefore not whether Private 5G is better than Wi-Fi, but whether there are specific hospital applications where cellular characteristics provide an advantage.
Mobility is one obvious example. Clinical staff can move between wards, floors and buildings while continuing to use applications running on smartphones, tablets or specialised medical devices. Connected equipment can move with patients without requiring users to repeatedly authenticate or reconnect. The SIM/eSIM-based identity model also allows the hospital to tightly control which devices are authorised to use the private network.
A good early example comes from the UK's South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM), which trialled a Private 5G network at Bethlem Royal Hospital between 2021 and 2022. The objective was not simply faster broadband. The Trust wanted a network dedicated to clinical purposes, controlled access, high availability for clinical staff and improved coverage both inside and outside its buildings.
Applications investigated included mobile clinical observations, IoT sensors, augmented reality and AI-enabled CCTV analytics. The NHS reported that the network could provide speeds of up to 799 Mbps and was expected to increase wireless coverage three-fold. One of the more practical benefits was simply keeping clinicians connected while moving around the hospital so that observations could be recorded digitally without connectivity becoming part of the workflow problem.
Interestingly, the SLaM trial also provides a useful reality check. IoT applications such as fridge temperature monitoring and air-quality sensing did not require the bandwidth or capabilities of Private 5G. The NHS concluded that cheaper technologies such as Wi-Fi or LoRaWAN could also be considered for these applications. Device compatibility was another challenge, with equipment supporting particular frequency bands and problems initially encountered with some Apple devices.
These lessons are important. A hospital probably should not deploy Private 5G just to connect temperature sensors.
More recent projects are starting to explore applications where the case is considerably stronger.
At Oulu University Hospital in Finland, a Private 5G Standalone network was deployed specifically to support research into next-generation healthcare applications. The network uses the 4000–4100 MHz spectrum range with 22 pico radios and a geographically redundant high-availability core. One of the main areas being explored is AR/VR-based visualisation, allowing surgeons, nurses and anaesthesiology specialists to access and visualise patient information in operating rooms and wards.
In July 2026, Cosmote Telekom announced a Private 5G Standalone deployment at Aretaieio University Hospital in Athens. The network is dedicated to the hospital's operating theatres, the education centre, radiology and radiotherapy departments. The EU-backed 5G-SHEAL project is looking at applications including high-precision surgical planning using real-time 3D imaging, remote medical training and telemedicine. Dedicated SIMs are used to connect authorised headsets and smart devices.
Another interesting development is happening at Bordeaux University Hospital in France. Rather than building a completely isolated Private 5G network, the 5MART HO5PITAL project is implementing a hybrid architecture based on Bouygues Telecom's 5G Standalone network, network slicing and edge computing. Coverage is being rolled out across 18 buildings from the second half of 2026, with public connectivity available alongside dedicated connectivity for hospital applications. Planned use cases from 2027 include connected ambulances, 3D surgical modelling and connected devices in operating theatres.
This hybrid approach may ultimately prove particularly relevant to healthcare. Hospitals are not isolated factories. Staff, patients, ambulances and devices move between the hospital and the outside world. Some applications need highly controlled local connectivity, while others need continuity across a public mobile network.
Singapore's National University Health System (NUHS) is exploring a similar idea through a virtual Private 5G deployment with Singtel and Ericsson. The architecture combines hospital connectivity with nationwide reach using 5G network slicing. Applications being explored include XR-assisted surgery, clinical guidance, robotics, remote monitoring and hospital-at-home services.
Connected ambulances illustrate why this matters. An ambulance may need public 5G while travelling through the city, but connectivity could transition into a hospital's controlled environment on arrival. Video, diagnostic information and other patient data could potentially be available to the receiving clinical team before the patient reaches the emergency department.
The EU-backed Hospital5G project in Luxembourg is examining exactly this sort of model. Running from 2025 to 2027 and led by NTT Luxembourg with Fondation Hôpitaux Robert Schuman, it is deploying a 5G SA Mobile Private Network across two hospital sites. Its three main use cases are mission-critical push-to-talk communications, seamless communications between connected ambulances and hospitals, and connected medical devices. The network is designed to integrate private and public 5G while keeping the main system on site.
The applications that appear to make the strongest case for Private 5G are therefore not necessarily the huge numbers of basic IoT sensors frequently mentioned in 5G presentations. They are more likely to include:
- mobile clinical workers and medical equipment requiring continuous connectivity across a large hospital campus;
- AR/VR and high-resolution visualisation for surgery, training and remote expertise;
- connected ambulances and applications that need mobility between public and private networks;
- high-bandwidth mobile imaging and video;
- robotics and autonomous systems;
- secure clinical communications and push-to-talk;
- selected connected medical devices where controlled identity, quality of service and reliability are important; and
- applications combining Private 5G with local edge computing and AI.
There is another interesting component developing alongside the network: edge computing. Hospitals generate considerable amounts of sensitive data, and not everything needs to travel to a distant cloud. Imaging analysis, computer vision, AR/VR rendering and some AI applications can potentially be processed locally. In this architecture Private 5G provides the wireless transport while an on-premises or nearby edge platform provides the computing resources. NTT DATA describes this as combining the hospital's wireless "sensory layer" with an on-premises intelligence layer.
This is also where some of the discussion around data sovereignty needs nuance. A Private 5G network does not automatically make an application secure, compliant or sovereign. Those properties depend on the overall architecture, including where the mobile core, application servers, management systems and data are located and who has access to them. Nevertheless, having the option to terminate traffic locally and operate an on-premises core can be valuable in environments dealing with sensitive clinical information.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle is not the network at all but the device ecosystem.
Private cellular networks work extremely well when devices contain suitable 4G/5G modems, support the required spectrum bands and can accept the necessary SIM or eSIM credentials. Hospitals, however, contain equipment from many manufacturers with long replacement cycles. A piece of medical equipment may remain in use far longer than a consumer smartphone. Retrofitting cellular connectivity through gateways or adapters is possible, but it removes some of the simplicity that Private 5G promises.
The SLaM experience demonstrated this problem early on. As more medical equipment manufacturers incorporate cellular connectivity directly into their products, the proposition could become considerably easier.
Healthcare could therefore become one of the more interesting Private 5G verticals over the next few years, but probably not because hospitals will replace their Wi-Fi networks with 5G.
The more realistic model is a heterogeneous wireless environment. Wi-Fi handles enterprise and general-purpose connectivity. Bluetooth, RFID and LPWAN technologies connect suitable sensors and tracking devices. Public 4G/5G provides wide-area connectivity. Neutral-host systems improve indoor public mobile coverage. Private 5G provides a controlled mobility layer for applications where its particular capabilities justify the additional infrastructure.
What makes the current wave of hospital projects significant is that the discussion is gradually moving beyond demonstrations of remote surgery and futuristic healthcare. The deployments at SLaM, Oulu, Athens, Bordeaux, Luxembourg and Singapore are examining much more mundane but potentially valuable problems: keeping clinicians connected, moving medical equipment around reliably, finding assets, securely connecting devices, bringing specialists into procedures remotely and maintaining connectivity between ambulances and hospitals.
Those are the sorts of practical problems on which successful private networks tend to be built.
The hospital may not need a single wireless "nervous system" after all. It is more likely to need several complementary nervous systems, with Private 5G increasingly becoming one of them.
Comments
Post a Comment