Scout’s job is just to ask questions. A lot of them.

How long have you had a fever? Are you feeling short of breath? When you bend your neck forward, is there pain that is so severe it makes you want to cry?

If so, Scout might recommend a trip to the emergency room. Scout is usually overly cautious about these things. It kind of has to be, as a robot.

Scout is a conversational chatbot made by health tech company Gyant and used by Intermountain Healthcare in Utah to tell patients what they should do when they feel sick. It may suggest getting some good rest, or setting up a doctor’s appointment or, oftentimes, making a trip to the ER or an urgent-care facility.

Telehealth became an even bigger industry during COVID-19. Doctors were forced to think of creative ways to see patients as people were forced to stay home to avoid the spread of the virus.

However, as 5G is starting to roll out, telehealth may be breaking into a completely new plane. At Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA) the Air Force is testing capabilities that could be the future of medicine.

“5G brings a whole new paradigm and architecture to the table. From what we’ve seen before even up through the current 5G  non-standalone that you see advertised on TV today,” Jody Little, executive program manager for 5G NextGen at JBSA, said during a Federal Insights discussion sponsored by Verizon. “Now you can bring large amounts of data forward or back to it and operate in the forward edge. You can virtualize these applications and get very ultra-low latency. And now you’re supporting lots of sensors. Whereas in, say, 4G, you could support maybe 100. Here, you can support 1000s.”

That means that doctors have the opportunity to monitor patients like never before. Doctors across the country can sit in on surgeries and experience them as if it were almost in-person by looking at multiple sensors and using virtual reality.