Northern Ireland’s healthcare system is under growing pressure from an ageing population, rising chronic conditions, and the operational realities of serving rural and coastal communities on an island with dispersed inhabitants. Geographical and contextual challenges arise for emergency response times; situational awareness, and access to specialist support, making digital connectivity a critical enabler of a safer, more resilient healthcare delivery system.
Given the regional setting and the challenges at play, a new collaboration between local search and rescue charity, an IoT security company and Ulster University demonstrates how advanced 5G infrastructure can move beyond pilots to deliver real public value. Funded by Belfast City Council through the Belfast 5G Innovation Region programme, the initiative strengthens emergency response and public safety through secure, resilient, real-time drone intelligence sharing capabilities increasingly aligned with digital healthcare priorities such as rapid triage, remote assessment, and coordinated care.
Led by the search and rescue experts, anchoring innovation in frontline search and rescue operations across Northern Ireland’s rural, coastal, and hard-to-reach areas, the project is grounded in real-life user experience, first-hand knowledge of the problems to shape the project aims and direction of solution development. The rescue environments demand reliable, low- latency communications where traditional networks often fall short. Software expertise and Ulster University provide the technical foundation, integrating secure 5G connectivity with system integration, predictive analytics, and rigorous validation to ensure performance under mission-critical conditions.
Led at Ulster University by Dr Usman Hadi and aligned with the Centre for Digital Healthcare Technologies (CDHT), the project illustrates how trusted connectivity, digital twins, and intelligent systems can support faster, data-driven decision-making across emergency and healthcare services. More broadly, it offers a scalable model for how 5G-enabled platforms can support digital health transformation across public services.
For Belfast and Northern Ireland, the collaboration reinforces a clear lesson: when advanced networks are designed around real operational need, they become powerful tools for healthcare resilience, public safety, and regional innovation. Within CDHT we are centralising research capability in engineering, computing and biomolecular sciences, with clinical integration, to create real-world solutions to ease healthcare challenges from a local need, for global application.
Professor Jim McLoughlin, Biomedical Engineering lead for CDHT,
“Never before has digital approaches to healthcare been so important in Northern Ireland, especially at a time when electronic care records have been successfully rolled out it is now highly important that good connectivity via 5G and beyond is fully developed. This will allow medical internet of things devices to become part of community healthcare as well as the overall hospital system to improve workflows, efficiency and productivity, all with clinical and patient benefits plus economic opportunities.”
CDHT, supported by UK Government and Northern Ireland Executive through the Belfast Region City Deal, is creating a dedicated translational ecosystem where engineering, computing, biomolecular science and clinical practice converge. By embedding researchers alongside healthcare providers and industry partners, CDHT accelerates the journey from laboratory innovation to validated, real-world deployment. This integrated approach positions Belfast as a globally connected testbed for scalable digital health solutions.
CDHT welcomes international industry, research and health system partners to collaborate in shaping the next generation of digitally enabled healthcare technology.
To find out more about CDHT, please visit: www.cdht.tech
