Evaluating the Capability of 3G, 4G, and 5G Networks in Delivering a Virtual Clinic Solution

Remote, rural, and underserved areas in sub-Saharan Africa struggle to provide proper healthcare services due to lack of resources such as doctors. Virtual clinics can offer populations in these areas increased access to doctors and therefore higher quality healthcare. However, successful implementation of virtual clinics depends on the availability of reliable communication networks, which are not always accessible in remote, rural, and underserved areas. In this paper, we present and evaluate a virtual clinic system which has been designed for a remote, rural, and underserved area in South Africa. The system was designed to be flexible in that it can adjust its services to fit the network constraints of the context it is implemented in. To evaluate this, the system was implemented over two major South African network provider's 3G, 4G, and 5G networks to validate its performance. Results show that the virtual clinic can provide clinical services on each of the networks, with the best performance coming from 5G networks as expected. The results indicate that the virtual clinic can be successful in 3G-constrained settings such as remote, rural, and underserved areas. Additionally, the results motivate key stakeholders such as telecommunications companies to invest in 4G and 5G infrastructure in remote, rural, and underserved areas so that higher-level, better-quality healthcare can be provided in these areas. Ultimately, this research encourages further evaluation of the clinic which will lead to implementation not only in South Africa, but across the continent.