The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting capacity issues within the health service mean that the approach to the delivery of health and care services is fundamentally changing.
There is a rapid growth in the virtual healthcare market and the use of remote monitoring of patients in their own homes instead of in hospital. Pre-pandemic the majority of remote patient monitoring in the home was for long-term conditions including COPD and heart failure but virtual care is now being expanded and used to monitor patients with short-term conditions, including hypertension and respiratory illnesses.
Increasingly virtual wards are being developed to deliver care for patients at home who would otherwise have to be treated in hospital by enabling earlier supported discharge and providing alternatives to admission.
Read our virtual care and virtual wards brochure here