Healing Hands: The Tactile Internet in Future Tele-Healthcare

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Abstract

In the early 2020s, the coronavirus pandemic brought the notion of remotely connected care to the general population across the globe. Oftentimes, the timely provisioning of access to and the implementation of affordable care are drivers behind tele-healthcare initiatives. Tele-healthcare has already garnered significant momentum in research and implementations in the years preceding the worldwide challenge of 2020, supported by the emerging capabilities of communication networks. The Tactile Internet (TI) with human-in-the-loop is one of those developments, leading to the democ-ratization of skills and expertise that will significantly impact the long-term developments of the provisioning of care. However, significant challenges remain that require today’s communication networks to adapt to support the ultra-low latency required. The resulting latency challenge neces-sitates trans-disciplinary research efforts combining psychophysiological as well as technological solutions to achieve one millisecond and below round-trip times. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the benefits enabled by solving this network latency reduction challenge by employing state-of-the-art Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) devices in a testbed, realizing the service differentiation required for the multi-modal human-machine interface. With completely new types of services and use cases resulting from the TI, we describe the potential impacts on remote surgery and remote rehabilitation as examples, with a focus on the future of tele-healthcare in rural settings.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number1404
Number of pages16
JournalSensors
Volume22
Issue number4
Publication statusPublished - 11 Feb 2022
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85124320650
PubMed 35214306
dblp journals/sensors/SenkUTRLSNSF22
Mendeley 822eeb12-c962-31ab-a608-6fdecc8a387d
unpaywall 10.3390/s22041404
ORCID /0000-0001-7008-1537/work/142248615
ORCID /0000-0001-8409-5390/work/142254919

Keywords

Sustainable Development Goals

Keywords

  • Human-in-the-loop, Multi-modal, Multisensory perception, Tactile internet, Tele-healthcare