ITECH1100 Digital Revolution: Impact of 5G on Pharmaceutical Industry

This report explores the potential impact of 5G technology on the pharmaceutical industry, focusing on the disruptions it may cause in various business processes. It discusses real-time access to healthcare services, changes in medical information dissemination, and improvements in analyzing MRI scans. The report also delves into the ethical and regulatory constraints, using Lawrence Lessig’s framework to address market, law, architecture, and social/ethical considerations. Furthermore, it examines process disruptions, including events, actors, activities, decision points, and outcomes, particularly concerning wearable sensor networks. The report recommends security measures like firewall appliances and data encryption to mitigate risks. Finally, it presents process model diagrams illustrating the changes before and after the implementation of 5G technology in the pharmaceutical industry.

Running head: Understanding Digital Revolution 1
Understanding Digital Revolution
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Author Note
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Table of Contents
Part one............................................................................................................................................3

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Description...................................................................................................................................3
Part two – Brainstorming.................................................................................................................4
Three disruption...........................................................................................................................4
Part three – Regulation and Ethics...............................................................................................5
Market......................................................................................................................................6
Law..........................................................................................................................................6
Architecture.............................................................................................................................6
Social/Ethical...........................................................................................................................7
Part four – Process Disruptions...................................................................................................7
Events......................................................................................................................................7
Actors.......................................................................................................................................8
Activities and tasks..................................................................................................................8
Decision Points........................................................................................................................8
Outcome...................................................................................................................................9
Recommendation.....................................................................................................................9
Process model diagram (before and after disruption)................................................................10
Before....................................................................................................................................10
After.......................................................................................................................................12
References......................................................................................................................................13

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Part one
Description
The topic taken by the Group is the potential impact of 5g internet on the pharmaceutical
industry. The pharmaceutical industry has had tremendous revolution not only in medical
technology but also in terms of information technology disruptions. The 5G technology which is
still in its early stages has been making headlines in terms of its technical specifications. The
various 5G vendors are reported to make an announcement on when the trials for the technology
to begin. Some are very optimistic it will go mainstream in early 2020. The most prospective
usage of the technology lies in the Internet of things innovations (Zhang, 2013). This technology
promises to provide ubiquitous internet access to the majority of IoT devices are reasonable
speeds. The players in the health sector especially the pharmaceutical ones have begun making
discussions and research on the various specification for the sector in order to take full advantage
of the 5G revolutionary technology. The discussion has been centered onto the adoption of the
5G is focused on the patient and social health care programs that 5G shall be useful in
implementing (Yip & McKern, 2016).
The World Health Organization has set up an eHealth masterplan which has put in
tremendous efforts to put in different use cases that the health industry can benefit due to the
incoming revolution of the 5G technology. In the masterplan involves seeking consultations with
the various policymakers to ensure the foreseen technology does not cause negative disruptions
especially with issues with privacy rights violations due to the ubiquitous nature of the 5G

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technology. This foreseen interoperability can potentially bring such issues (Yates & Akhgar,
2013).
Part two – Brainstorming
Three disruption
The revolution envisioned by the 5G wireless network technology shall disrupt some of the
business processes in the medical industry, more specifically, the pharmaceutical sub-industry.
This disruption is discussed below;
First, there will be real-time access to the health care services where one does not have to be
physically present at the pharmacist to get the services. This means that, with the advent of
Artifical intelligence converging with the sensor network, the combination shall potentially
ensure individuals can get access to the pharmaceutical services without having to be present at
the health institution. This will disrupt the contemporary means which are more manual and
conservative (Tian, De Cremer, & Wu, 2017).
Second, the 5G shall disrupt the traditional bearer of the medial information. With 5G, everyone
shall have access to big data and analyze the trends of diseases themselves and use the analysis
to make their owned informed decision. This will make the consumer be also a pseudo physician
capable of using the information to make medical decisions without the need of a physician.
Third, the current methods to analyze the MRI scans from the various pharmaceutical companies
will be disrupted. Currently, the method uses nonrobust methods which uses the high-speed
spectrum to speedily transfer the scans for more quality analyzing and bring the result in realtime
due to the inclusion of multimedia component in the design of 5G.

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The current wearable in the pharmaceutical industry that includes thing such as the heartbeat
sensors will receive serious disruptions. The 5G promises to deliver a whole new level of quality
of experiences from the patients undertaking such medications that involve the wearables. The
caregivers, heartbeat and or sugar level shall be linked into one communication infrastructure
thanks to the potential of 5G. The interactions between the patient and the doctor, therefore, shall
be enhanced in real time. The current technologies don’t provide these ubiquitous and real-time
data processing capabilities (Sleilati, 2017).
Other potential mentions in the disruptions include, the wellness and monitoring programs will
receive slight disruptions, more big data analysis for research professional due to low latencies in
the 5G architecture. Virtual reality will possibly surface in most of the rehabilitation center for
those who abuse some of the pharmaceuticals.
From the above disruptions, the team has picked the merging of sensors and networking
infrastructure of 5G to disrupt the wearable technology in the pharmaceuticals especially for a
patient who wears the heartbeat sensors and blood sugar level sensors (Sivakami & Kumar,
2013).
Part three – Regulation and Ethics
The wearable sensor network which is envisioned to use the 5G networking capabilities and the
Internet of things technology to ensure there is synchronization between the caretaker, the
physician and any other concerned party who may wish to use the data collected from the
environment and other physical conditions. This data such as the sugar level tracking, quality of
air and any other environmental factors that may put the patient at risk shall be processed and

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communicated to the caregiver and doctor in real time for action. This is seen as a disruptive
technology that has some ethical and regulatory constraints which may hamper its conception
into the pharmaceutical industry. The report has used Lawrence Lessig’s regulations framework
tied in terms of Market, Law, Architecture (Physical/Natural) and Norm(Social/Ethical) key
constraints for each category includes (Ran, 2013);
Market
i. Current markets lack the critical consumers to warranty the investments due to high
initial and maintenance costs of implementing the ubiquitous network
Law
i. The is seen to be a violation of privacy laws due to ubiquitous processing of patient
information by parties who may not be authorized in the sensor ubiquitous network
ii. Data security problems are again posses key constraints into the development of this
disruptive technology due to potential hacking of the system posing life-threatening
problems
Architecture
i. The current system will require more invention into the design of batteries that are more
portable hence usable in different environments. The current batteries don’t last long
enough before they get recharged.
Social/Ethical
i. The technology will lead to health technology divide especially for those in the rural
areas where the 5G may not have good penetration into the rural

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ii. The data is accessed by a varying number of health personnel and caregiver makes an
individual lose their personal data to the other person involved in the research. Such data
can be unethically used without the prior consent of the patient
Part four – Process Disruptions
The one process in the patient, caregiver, and physical relationship will be the access and
retrieval of information. The current process involves the caretaker taking periodic readings from
the sensors such as the heartbeat sensor and the blood sugar level sensor, rely on the information
using the contemporary means to the physician who analyzes the data using their various
analytical software to make an informed decision.
With the revolutions of 5G, there will be a complete overhaul of the whole process in
terms of communications and decision making functions (Liu, 2013).
Events
Several events can trigger some actions in the process flow. Key among them is changes in the
physical environment variables which will trigger the sensor to submit signal to the IoT devices
which in effect rely the signal through the high speed 5G network infrastructure.
Actors
The actor in the process shall be the patient, doctor, caretaker, sensor network, the IoT network
all linked up through the 5G wireless evolution.

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Activities and tasks
The patient shall be the wearer of the sensor devices who will the initiator of the interaction by
providing data which shall be passed throughout the process.
The caretaker is the assigned person who will be representing the patient in case he/she is not
able to make sound decisions due to the analysis of the sensors. The caretaker shall have a link to
the patient sensor devices via the wearable which will send sensor signals in case of events occur
in the network (Klimberg & Lawrence, 2013).
The doctor shall be the receiver of the information. This data will send in realtime and accessible
to the doctor in case an event is triggered.
The IoT sensor network;
This system shall provide the link of the 5G wireless network to the physical environment
sensors which are warmed by the patient.
5G wireless network;
This system of high-speed spectrum shall be used by the new process to connect all the
components and systems in the process due to its efficient and effective data transfer speeds
Decision Points
In the new dispensation, the key decision points that will trigger the data transfer include changes
in the physical environment variable that is way above the threshold amount. For example,
exposure to high temperature, high sugar level condition. The algorithm will make decisions on
what data to submit to the real time database used by both the physician and the caretaker

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Outcome
The output of the process is more real-time analyzed data from the various sensors which can
now be used by the physicians in the pharmaceutical industry to do more research and train their
models to make a better decision for the good of the patient.
From the description, it is clear the contemporary process shall be greatly affected by the
envisioned disruption in the sector. The decision points in the whole data processing will be
purely guided by algorithms designed and deployed into the system. These algorithms shall aid
in creating trigger-based events for the subsequent sub processed in the process flow (Hanna,
2016).
Recommendation
For the process to be flawless, the following recommendations are given,
i. Use of firewall security appliance between the internal IoT and sensor network and
external 5G network
ii. Encryption of data while on transit between the private and public networks to reduce
data confidentiality violations

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Process model diagram (before and after disruption)
Before
The following process flow diagram represents the contemporary flow in the wearables
technology

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After

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References
Hanna, N. (2016). Mastering Digital Transformation : Towards a Smarter Society, Economy,
City and Nation. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Klimberg, R. K., & Lawrence, K. D. (2013). Advances in Business and Management
Forecasting. Bingley, U.K.: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Liu, Z. (2013). Environmental Protection and Resources Exploitation. Durnten-Zurich,
Switzerland: Trans Tech Publications.
Ran, B. (2013). The Dark Side of Technological Innovation. Charlotte, N.C.: Information Age
Publishing.
Sivakami, R., & Kumar, A. (2013). Sustainable Development and Environmental Science. New
Delhi: Daya Publishing House.
Sleilati, E. B. (2017). Lebanon : Social, Political and Economic Issues. [Hauppauge], New
York]: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Tian, T., De Cremer, D., & Wu, C. (2017). Huawei : Leadership, Culture, and Connectivity.
Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd.
Yates, S., & Akhgar, B. (2013). Strategic Intelligence Management : National Security
Imperatives and Information and Communications Technologies. Boston: Butterworth-
Heinemann.
Yip, G. S., & McKern, B. (2016). China’s Next Strategic Advantage : From Imitation to
Innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Zhang, J. (2013). Information Technology Applications in Industry. Durnten-Zurich,
Switzerland: Trans Tech Publications.