Telemedicine, continuous monitoring, and remote procedures are becoming increasingly important in medicine. For these to operate seamlessly in everyday clinical practice, data must be transmitted quickly, reliably, and without interruption. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and TUM University Hospital have investigated how future 6G networks can manage computing power and data transmission in such a way that up to 40 percent more applications can be run simultaneously.
F. Jurosch / TUM To date, computing power in hospitals is not always available exactly where it is needed. However, delays or interruptions in data transmission can have serious consequences for applications such as teleoperation.
Provide computing power where it's needed
A research team has developed an approach that will allow future 6G networks to distribute medical applications more flexibly across the network. The central question is where individual applications are best executed: as close as possible to the patient, directly within the hospital, at a nearby network node, or in a remote data center.
The closer the processing takes place to the patient, the better delays can be reduced, and high demands on data transmission and computing power can be met. At the same time, the network would be overloaded if all applications were processed directly there. Therefore, it is important to dynamically shift technology to where it provides the greatest benefit in each situation.
"For medical applications, it's not enough to simply transfer data from A to B as quickly as possible," says Wolfgang Kellerer, professor of communication networks at the TUM School of Computation, Information, and Technology and a member of TUM-MIRMI . "In the future, decisions will have to be made within the networks about where computing power is needed, which applications take priority, and when functions need to be shifted within the network. Especially in medicine, this flexibility can play a crucial role in ensuring that digital services are reliably available."
Up to 40 percent more applications running simultaneously
The method is based on solving an optimization problem. The system assesses which applications are active, what their requirements are, and what network and computing resources are available. "From this, we can determine where the respective processes should be executed within the network," adds Wolfgang Kellerer.
Simulations show that this approach allows up to 40 percent more medical applications to be run simultaneously-even when network capacity and computing power are limited. Future 6G networks could thus provide an important technical foundation for reliable, flexible, and more digitally supported medical care.
Nicolai Kröger, Hongyu Zhu, Franziska Jurosch, Sven Kolb, Dirk Wilhelm, Wolfgang Kellerer, Fidan Mehmeti: "In-Network Processing of Medical Applications in Emerging 6G Networks Considering Migration" in proceedings of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Networking 2026 Conference (NETWORKING 2026), Lugano, Switzerland, May 24-27, 2026.
https://opendl.ifip-tc6.org/db/conf/networking/networking2026/1571260813.pdf
- Wolfgang Kellerer is a professor of communication networks at the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology , as well as PI at the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) .
- Co-author Dirk Wilhelm is a professor of medical robotics at the TUM School of Medicine and Health , as well as Surgeon and Senior Consultant at the Department of Surgery at the TUM University Hospital.
- The research is being conducted as part of the 6G-life project.
- 6G-life is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR).
