How Edge Computing Is Transforming Healthcare
Every day, healthcare providers make life or death decisions that are informed by training, experience, and — increasingly — edge computing. Changing the quality of data and the speed at which it’s available, along with how it’s secured, has the potential to improve clinical outcomes and the healthcare experience while curtailing costs and streamlining compliance.
Primarily, however, it’s only the innovative healthcare organizations that are addressing dated processes and technology like Internet of Things (IoT) gateways. Although those processes are essential for managing Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices, they are limited in environments with multiple clouds and endpoints, so it’s also critical for medical and life sciences organizations to adapt and innovate to advance the healthcare ecosystem.
Edge computing as healthcare’s central nervous system
Edge computing puts workloads, hosting, and applications closer to where data is generated and consumed. AT&T’s recent cybersecurity report on edge ecosystems in healthcare, sponsored in part by Akamai, uses an apt analogy for how software-defined architecture capabilities deliver fast, reliable results in near real-time:
“Imagine a world where healthcare practitioners are pulled into a crisis, such as a crowded hospital during a major catastrophe. The coordination of all the components needed to provide care: bed availability, routing doctors, sending nurses and supplies to where they are needed, performing and processing tests, etc. If a centralized system could make all the decisions that need to be made, along with system performance monitoring – that is a formidable effort tied to critical outcomes.”
The flexibility of software-defined architecture extends to software-defined networking (SDN), which can allocate more resources during peak usage, scale up for busy periods, and scale down during low activity. SDN also allows for centralized network configuration, reducing costs for resource-challenged healthcare organizations by minimizing the time needed to configure individual devices. That cost savings also applies to other areas, including the staffing of network experts.
Enhancing security and compliance
The average costs of a healthcare data breach reached nearly $11 million in 2023 — a 53% increase since 2020. But perhaps even more important than the financial costs are the operational and reputational costs, such as inclusion in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights breach portal.
Keeping data on a local network via edge computing decreases the risk that it will be intercepted in transit, making security and compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) easier.
The advantages of a decentralized approach
Edge computing holds an advantage over other systems because it decentralizes how data is processed. Smaller information centers and networks are more efficient than having one centralized system for storing and transferring patient files, and they can be linked to the burgeoning ranks of remote patient monitoring devices and wearables. That can result in shorter transfer times between devices and data centers.
Decentralization also has several other advantages. Pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, for instance, can be made less susceptible to data breaches — or, if they are breached, they can mitigate the effects by preventing access to everything from one access point. And the continued emergence of data sovereignty regulations (such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which defines how data should be stored, processed, and exposed) means that there are additional challenges for data security and privacy that edge computing can address by keeping data close to its source.
Another advantage: Raw data can be obscured and secured before it's sent to the cloud or any other primary data center. Not moving data to a centralized location initially can lower costs because the volume of medical data can make moving it cost-prohibitive.
5 top uses cases for edge computing in healthcare
There are myriad use cases across the healthcare and life sciences ecosystem that support edge computing and the improved clinical and financial outcomes that are associated with it. The top five use cases include:
Providing care from anywhere
Improving pharmaceutical supply chain resilience
Evolving the nature of surgery and provider training
Speeding up the transfer of patient information
Keeping data — and patients — safe
Providing care from anywhere
Whether it’s aging in place, remote patient monitoring, or telehealth, edge computing has made care delivery easier than ever before. IoMT devices, including wearables like smart watches, can detect irregular heartbeats and strokes and connect providers with those they care for in real time, enhancing access to healthcare for people with mobility issues or those who live in nonurban environments. No matter what the use case, edge infrastructure is crucial when it comes to eliminating data transmission latency issues.
Improving pharmaceutical supply chain resilience
Supply chain resiliency is increasingly challenged by recent global health, weather, and political events that prevent medications and their components from being sourced from disparate locations, which is compounded by the lack of access to secure or fast networks. Blockchain technology and edge computing, however, can locate and trace pharmaceutical products as they progress through the supply chain. Those capabilities can also mitigate concerns like heat and cold stability that can affect the efficacy of biologic drugs, with localized monitoring and temperature control via devices and sensors.
Evolving the nature of surgery and provider training
IoMT and edge technology, along with artificial intelligence (AI), can expand the breadth of robotics in surgery, especially procedures in remote locations, which can help mitigate the lack of access to larger facilities and an ongoing specialist shortage.
Physicians can use video to operate in real time from outside a patient’s operating room thanks to high-speed 5G that removes latency concerns. For more common diagnoses like appendicitis, 5G robotic surgeries have made appendectomies easier and faster with less blood loss, more precise stitching, and minimal scarring compared with traditional laparoscopic methods.
One of the most headline-grabbing examples involved doctors in China who used 5G to insert a stimulation device in the brain of a patient with Parkinson’s disease from nearly 1,900 miles away. Until 2019, remote surgery using wireless networks had a lag time up to two seconds, a delay that could be fatal for a patient in surgery. 5G in healthcare reduces latency between devices to two milliseconds, no matter where the input or output.
Enhanced data transfer and device response times can refine the use of virtual reality and augmented reality for medical training (a modality now used by the many medical schools that pivoted during the pandemic) — changing the face of where and how providers learn.
Speeding up the transfer of patient information
Speed has always been important in healthcare delivery, but reliable networks and better bandwidth now support the need for speed. Patient files with massive images can be stored on edge networks to eliminate delays in data sharing or file uploads. Edge computing also means providers can rely on technology that uses AI or IoMT to aid in diagnoses and predictive analytics.
Speeding up the transfer of patient information is vital for hospitals in particular, where latency issues, slow processing, and an unreliable network can all impede emergency services.
Keeping data — and patients — safe
No matter where or how care is delivered, patient data must be kept secure to comply with HIPAA regulations. Decentralizing data using edge networks not only complies with evolving data sovereignty regulations, but also means shorter transfer times between devices and data centers when smaller networks can be created and linked to specific devices. The approach means players across the healthcare ecosystem are less vulnerable to data breaches since edge networks prevent hackers from accessing entire systems from one access point — and safer data means safer patients.
Learn more
The evolution of the technology that supports better care delivery and organizational resilience means that legacy processes and tools need to evolve, too. Learn more about Akamai’s innovative ways of supporting and securing healthcare and life sciences organizations, at every stage of development.
