Local 5G Service | transcosmos

transcosmos inc. (Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan; Representative Director, Co-presidents: Koichi Iwami, Masaaki Muta) is proud to announce that the company’s proposal for the FY2022 Development Demonstrations for Realizing Local 5G Services to Solve Issues (Development Demonstration Projects) run by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has been chosen by MIC as a project in the medical field. The company has proposed a project titled Achieving resilience in emergency medical care service through wide-area cooperation of metropolitan hospitals, and workstyle reform for doctors using local 5G (the fifth generation of cellular technology). In the medical field, transcosmos is the only company that has been chosen by MIC for two consecutive years.

Leveraging ultra-high speed connectivity that local 5G offers, transcosmos will conduct a demonstration experiment under the following three themes: 1) wide-area cooperation, 2) remote diagnostics, and 3) in-hospital mobility as a service (MaaS). First, the company will build a local 5G-powered services model on telecommunications networks where various networks including local 5G and 5G networks offered by carriers (public networks) connect seamlessly. The 5G-powered services model includes video sharing solutions, autonomous mobile robots, and more. The experiment will be conducted at St. Marianna University School of Medicine Hospital (Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture; St. Marianna University Hospital), a tertiary emergency medical facility, and Kawasaki Municipal Tama Hospital (Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture), a secondary emergency medical facility. Through this project, transcosmos will build a resilient, collaborative framework among local medical institutions which ensures the provision of medical services resources for patients in urgent need. Moreover, the company aims to achieve task shifting and workstyle reform not only for doctors but also for nurses and nurse practitioners, and ultimately create a society that ensures quality medical services for all.

With transcosmos being the representative, transcosmos, Kawasaki City, St. Marianna University Hospital and NTT Communications Corporation will form a consortium and conduct the demonstration experiment.

■ Proposal overview

(Background and Challenges)

・ Background
In addition to overwhelming needs for emergency inpatient facilities and for an advanced medical care services system that can manage mass-casualty incidents and contagious diseases including COVID-19 in recent years, overtime limits for doctors, or so called workstyle reform for physicians, will come into effect in April 2024. Due to such factors, medical institutions today must address doctors’ long working hours.

・ Challenges in local communities
Given that Japan is expected to become a super-aged society, and there is a sharp rise in the number of ambulance transport, an enhancement of emergency medical care systems in local communities is a primary concern for local citizens. On the other hand, emergency and critical care centers at medical institutions, in particular St. Marianna University Hospital, are always operating at a high occupancy rate. Therefore, the institutions are facing challenges such as a shortage of attending doctors, overtime regulations, and an increased burden on nurses and other health care professionals.

(Themes of Planned Demonstration Experiment)

(1) Local 5G wide-area cooperation: Increase quality/efficiency by sharing videos among local medical facilities.
Objective: Enable ambulances to make an adequate judgement rapidly when choosing a medical facility for patients, and enhance the resilience of the emergency medical services system.
Method: Build a video sharing system among ambulances (fire department), the secondary and the tertiary emergency medical facilities, and share objective and highly reliable information.

(2) Increase operational efficiency and quality by remote support: Increase efficiency and achieve task shifting with integrated management of endoscopists and anesthesiologists.
Objective: Achieve task shifting among doctors, and increase operational efficiency.
Method: Enable attending doctors (anesthesiologists and endoscopists) to perform remote medical care. Using the remote medical care system, manage operations of the secondary and the tertiary emergency medical facilities, and provide training and guidance to medical students and young doctors.

(3) Increase efficiency and safety of in-hospital MaaS: Increase efficiency by using autonomous mobile robots for patient transfer.
Objective: Increase operational efficiency of nurses.
Method: Build a real-time remote monitoring system in order to use autonomous robots while ensuring medical safety.

* transcosmos aims to build a use case for the social implementation of local 5G solutions in the medical field through this project. To achieve this goal, the company will conduct a technology demonstration of building flexible and efficient area networks in the hospitals using distributed antenna systems and repeaters, in addition to the themes above.

(Vision)

Through this project, transcosmos will build a resilient, collaborative framework among local medical institutions which ensures the provision of emergency medical services resources for patients in urgent need. Moreover, the company aims to achieve task shifting and workstyle reform not only for doctors but also for nurses and nurse practitioners, and ultimately create a wellbeing society that ensures quality medical services for all.

■ Schedule and future plan
The consortium plans to begin making necessary arrangements for the demonstration experiment at St. Marianna University Hospital and other facilities from November, 2022. We will announce the details once fixed.

● About FY2022 Development Demonstrations for Realizing Local 5G Services to Solve Issues (Development Demonstration Projects): Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Communications, Japan official website
Results of Public Solicitation for Proposals concerning FY2022 Development Demonstrations for Realizing Local 5G Services to Solve Issues (Development Demonstration Projects)
https://www.soumu.go.jp/main_sosiki/joho_tsusin/eng/pressrelease/2022/8/05_05.html

* transcosmos is a trademark or registered trademark of transcosmos inc. in Japan and other countries.
* Other company names and product or service names used here are trademarks or registered trademarks of respective companies.

About transcosmos inc.

transcosmos launched its operations in 1966. Since then, we have combined superior “people” with up-to-date “technology” to enhance the competitive strength of our clients by providing them with superior and valuable services. transcosmos currently offers services that support clients’ business processes focusing on both sales expansion and cost optimization through our 172 bases across 28 countries/regions with a focus on Asia, while continuously pursuing Operational Excellence. Furthermore, following the expansion of e-commerce market on the global scale, transcosmos provides a comprehensive One-Stop Global E-Commerce Services to deliver our clients' excellent products and services to consumers in 46 countries/regions around the globe. transcosmos aims to be the “Global Digital Transformation Partner” of our clients, supporting the clients’ transformation by leveraging digital technology, responding to the ever-changing business environment.