Europe’s first dedicated 5G health and social care pilot, Liverpool 5G Health and Social Care, has been granted an extra year’s funding to support its work.

The announcement was jointly made with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) at an event to celebrate the project’s first successful year, at Sensor City in Liverpool.

The project will receive an extra £1.48 million (£0.94M in government funding, bringing the total DCMS funding to £4.9M, and also an additional £0.54 million from consortium partners.)

11 organisations from Liverpool’s hospitals, council, universities and technology SMEs have created new 5G supported health technologies to help people in Liverpool’s Kensington area to manage long-term health conditions like diabetes and epilepsy themselves at home. This frees up urgently needed health and social care resources to be used where they are critically needed.

Rosemary Kay, Liverpool 5G Health and Social Care Project Director, said: “Liverpool 5G is pleased to announce we’ve had funding for our 5G project extended by DCMS for another 12 months. This recognises the great work taking place across the project and gives us more time to explore the benefits of providing affordable 5G technology to people living in digitally deprived communities, with long-term health conditions.”

Margot James, Minister for Digital, said: “We want the UK to be a world leader in 5G and our modern industrial strategy will help deliver this. The Liverpool testbed is just one of the innovative 5G projects we’re funding across the country and I’m pleased it can continue its important work. I recently visited it and saw first-hand how 5G can improve quality of life and transform the way health and social care is delivered in our communities."

http://liverpool5g.org.uk/