How 6G Researchers Are Rethinking the Future of Healthcare

A seminar at the University of Oulu brought together researchers and engineers working on sensing, wireless systems and intelligent devices to explore how 6G might reshape healthcare systems.

“We warmly welcome our guests, professors from India.” With these words, Professor Teemu Myllylä opened the 6G Technology for Resilient and Intelligent Healthcare seminar at the University of Oulu. The event, held on May 22, 2025, was organised by Myllylä and Adjunct Professor Mariella Särestöniemi as part of the 6GESS project. The seminar brought together researchers from Finland and India to explore how wireless technologies and biomedical sensing might create more intelligent and resilient healthcare.

Integrated Sensing and the Promise of Quantum-Ready Healthcare

Associate Professor Atul Kumar, from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi, opened the technical programme. He outlined integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) and its potential role in reshaping healthcare.

ISAC combines two separate functions: wireless communication and sensor-based detection. It merges them into a single system, sharing hardware, frequency, and time resources. “In 6G, we are working on the area of integrated sensing and communications,” Kumar said. “We have also added a biosensor layer to this system.” These systems aim to transmit data and sense the environment in real time, with minimal overhead and faster reactions. For healthcare, this could mean more efficient remote monitoring and better responses to changes in a patient’s condition.

Kumar leads the Information Control Communication Lab at IIT (BHU) Varanasi. His team focuses on how control systems and communications interact, particularly in high-mobility or uncertain conditions. During his talk, he introduced a new waveform: Generalised Adaptive Spread Modulation. It has been tested in live trials at the India Mobile Congress. “This waveform works very well in the perspective of 6G in the integrated sensing and from both radar points of view, or in the communication,” Kumar stated. Such reliable operation, he suggested, may help support health applications that depend on precise timing and uninterrupted data flow.

The second half of his presentation looked further ahead. Kumar outlined early-stage research exploring quantum technologies’ potential contribution to future healthcare. Quantum-based sensing, he noted, could improve the detection of weak biological signals that are often hard to isolate in noisy environments. While still speculative, the idea is to build more precise sensors for monitoring physiological changes. Potential uses include MRI or long-range vital sign detection.

He also pointed to the scale of the healthcare market in India, describing the national need for decentralised, high-efficiency medical solutions as both urgent and economically significant. Whether through ISAC-based systems or, eventually, quantum-enabled diagnostics, the goal remains the same: to improve how healthcare operates in real-world conditions, across populations and geographies.

Systems That Sense, Decide and Connect

How can healthcare systems be made both wireless and intelligent? Three speakers approached this from different angles: algorithm design, hospital infrastructure, and wearable technology.

Assistant Professor Nhan Nguyen from the University of Oulu focused on two central components of 6G development: artificial intelligence and integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). His presentation explored how machine learning can improve wireless systems, which can also be used in clinical settings, where reliability and clarity are critical.

One of the key problems Nguyen addressed is how to divide wireless resources such as power and spectrum between devices that are simultaneously communicating and sensing. He described a method for subcarrier allocation that could help optimise bandwidth across wideband ISAC systems. These systems are meant for environments where fast, real-time decisions are essential. Like hospitals using remote diagnostics or mobile devices.

Rather than relying on black-box algorithms that are difficult to interpret, Nguyen explained how his team designs AI systems that reflect physical laws. These model-driven approaches are more transparent and stable, and they allow the system to learn efficiently while maintaining predictability. He described black-box models as “unexplainable, lengthy, unstable.” His aim is not to replace engineering logic, but to integrate AI with it.

Assistant Professor Erkki Harjula presented work on private 5G and 6G networks in healthcare settings. His team has conducted pilot deployments at OYS TestLab in Oulu, integrating private wireless infrastructure into hospital workflows. These networks operate independently of public infrastructure, allowing hospitals to retain full control over their data, latency and coverage.

Hospitals have specific needs, which distinguish them from other sectors. The layout is often complex, with equipment that cannot tolerate interference or signal delay. Harjula explained how private networks could help address these problems while also supporting secure communication between devices and services. His presentation suggested that the lessons from these trials would inform how next-generation networks are designed for use in other regulated environments.

Associate Professor Jack Soh continued the discussion by turning attention to the hardware that patients might actually wear. His work focuses on wireless body area networks (WBANs), and in particular, the antennas that function on, in or near the human body. He presented both simulations and hardware prototypes, showing how antenna types, materials and positioning affect wireless link performance and safety level for patients.

Wearable medical devices face unique constraints. They must be lightweight, durable, unobtrusive and safe, while still delivering reliable data. Soh showed that certain antenna structures can maintain signal quality, even when close to the skin or moving with the body, when designed using the correct strategies. This has implications on the performance of continuous monitoring systems, like those used for tracking vital signs or post-operative recovery.

Taken together, the three presentations offered a view of future healthcare systems built from the ground up. Nguyen addressed the logic that runs the system, Harjula the infrastructure that carries it, and Soh the devices that make it personal.

Engineering the Body’s Connection to 6G

As wireless systems evolve, researchers are asking how they can function reliably when worn on the body or embedded inside it. Associate Professor Rajeev Kumar and Assistant Professor Shivam Verma examined this challenge from two angles. Kumar focused on antennas for wearable and implantable sensors. Verma looked at microchips that process data locally, without relying on external servers.

Rajeev Kumar from Chitkara University, Punjab, presented compact, planar antennas designed for wearable and implantable medical devices. His aim is to improve how physiological data is captured and transmitted by systems that operate close to the body.

Antenna efficiency is central to this work. In many cases, signal strength drops when a device is used close to the body. Kumar showed how antenna geometry and material choice can help minimise that loss. He built sensor models for wearable, ingestible and implantable use, with potential uses in glucose monitoring, ECG capture and temperature tracking.

Shivam Verma from IIT BHU shifted the focus to integrated circuits. He introduced application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) designed to bring processing power directly to the sensor. In healthcare, this edge-computing model reduces reliance on cloud systems and enables faster, local decision-making. It also helps protect patient data.

He designed low-power ASICs for sensing and signal processing, built to support continuous monitoring with minimal energy use. One prototype combined communication with simple machine learning, without relying on a constant network connection. Verma argued that this kind of local processing will be essential for future medical wearables, especially when patients are mobile or connectivity is limited.

Both talks pointed to the same challenge. How can intelligence be embedded in the smallest possible footprint? Whether in the form of a flexible antenna or a customised microchip, the objective remains the same. Medical systems must be built to sense, process and respond in real time. They also need to do so in ways that are physically and computationally unobtrusive.

Intelligence in Motion

Assistant Professor Ankur Pandey and Associate ProfessorKishor P. Sarawadekar focused on how sensing systems can interpret human movement. Their work addressed different use cases, but both asked the same question: how can devices move from simply detecting motion to understanding it?

Ankur Pandey, from the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, Jais, Amethi, presented work on wireless sensing for activity recognition and localisation. His team is developing systems that track movement using radio signals, without cameras or physical contact. By analysing how signals reflect off the body, the system can tell if someone is walking, turning or standing still. This approach could support fall detection, patient monitoring and hands-free interaction in clinical settings.

Pandey also spoke about system design. His platform combines AI algorithms with low-latency wireless networks to support real-time decision-making. He placed this work within the emerging field of the Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), which links sensing, edge computing and adaptive response. The aim is to build environments that observe and act without waiting for external commands.

Kishor P. Sarawadekar from IIT BHU presented a specific application of movement sensing: smart gloves for physiotherapy. His team has built a prototype that tracks hand and finger motion during rehabilitation. The system includes Flex and motion sensors to measure the tone of muscles and the range of movement of hand joints, respectively. The gloves will be useful in pandemic situations like COVID-19, wherein distant interaction, examination, diagnosis, and treatment have to be offered to the patients. Moreover, this type of gloves will be useful to physicians, physiotherapists, orthopedicians for more precise diagnosis and to evaluate the progression of the disease and determine the next course of treatment. Sarawadekar also described how the gloves could be integrated with wireless networks and machine learning to extract features and predict unforeseen complications ahead of time. This will increase patients’ compliance with the treatment and improve the quality of hand rehabilitation.

Both talks explored how sensing and interpretation work together in healthcare. Pandey focused on systems that observe from a distance, while Sarawadekar focused on those that operate through physical contact. Both pointed to a shift in digital health, from collecting measurements to understanding what they mean.

Learning from Nature

Professor Juha Röning from the University of Oulu closed the programme with a talk on biomimetics and intelligent systems. Instead of drawing from engineering principles, he looked to biology for design ideas.

Röning studies how natural systems can guide the design of artificial ones. He looks at how animals sense, move and adapt to change, and how those behaviours can be translated into machines. Even simple organisms, he noted, can offer models for building systems that are both robust and responsive, especially when the goal is autonomy in unpredictable conditions.

Biomimetic design offers a different way to think about resilience in healthcare. Instead of relying on fixed protocols, systems could learn, adapt and respond based on what they observe—much like living organisms. Röning linked this approach to the broader goals of 6G research: building technologies that not only connect but also interpret and act.

Röning’s talk focused less on specific devices and more on the mindset behind designing them. He suggested that looking to biology might help engineers manage complexity, something healthcare has in abundance, and lead to stronger systems—systems that can adapt. Just as living organisms do.