6G-Enabled Intelligent Healthcare Transport Systems: Framework and Resource Allocation Strategy

Integrating 6G networks with emergency medical services (EMS) transportation aims to transform patient care during transit, yet maintaining reliable communication for mobile medical units poses technical hurdles. This paper introduces an intelligent reconfigurable surface-assisted healthcare transport system for the 6G (IRIS-HT6G) framework. We leverage reconfigurable intelligent surfaces to enhance communication links between healthcare vehicles, roadside units, and remote medical facilities. Our framework jointly optimizes RIS phase shifts, power allocation, and spectrum sharing to maximize system capacity while ensuring the reliability of critical healthcare data transmission. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of IRIS-HT6G over state-of-the-art baseline methods. The proposed framework achieves up to 30% higher link capacity, 50% lower latency, and significantly improved reliability in non-line-of-sight scenarios. Further, based on a 30-day trial involving 15 ambulances serving an urban population of 500 000, IRIS-HT6G achieved tangible improvements in EMS operations. Emergency response times decreased from 12.5 to 10.0 minutes through better fleet coordination. Patient care continuity during transport improved from 76% to 98% uptime, enabling uninterrupted vital sign monitoring and ECG transmission.