6G and intelligent healthcare: Taxonomy, technologies, open issues and future research directions

A decentralised patient-centric paradigm is gradually replacing the traditional hospital and specialist- focused healthcare model. Communication technologies have made it possible to provide customised and remote healthcare services. As the healthcare industry grows, the number of applications connected to the network will create data in various sizes and forms. The future network will face complex data rate, bandwidth, and latency demands. The existing communication technologies cannot meet the complex and diverse demands placed on communication networks by a wide range of healthcare applications. Therefore, the next generation of communication technology touted as the sixth generation (6G), is expected to provide crucial infrastructure for healthcare by 2030. Healthcare will be AI-driven and reliant on 6G connectivity technology, improving quality of life and healthcare services. Furthermore, future intelligent healthcare networks are expected to contain a combination of sixth-generation (6G) and Internet of Things (IoT) components that will increase network performance and cellular coverage and address a number of security concerns. This paper explores challenges in future of smart healthcare concerned with communication technologies and potential solutions for the early detection and mitigation of emergencies from the sixth-generation wireless technology perspective.