Global Snapshot: Virtual Hospitals
We’ve seen a huge rise in interest in virtual hospitals and telehealth since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. With good reason, too - in Australia particularly, virtual hospitals have proven pivotal in the response, both for treating COVID and also for looking after patients with other chronic conditions who may be at risk.
In the past year, many people have been treated virtually for the first time. But virtual hospitals, and the underpinning technology they use, have much wider applications , and have been in use much longer than that.
Let’s look at the history of virtual hospitals across the world, chart the current global picture and try to look ahead at our digital healthcare future.
Did virtual hospitals start because of Covid?
COVID-19 may have accelerated the shift to telehealth and virtual hospitals, but they were in development long before the pandemic.
Governments have been exploring the possibilities of telehealth for years - but now that the technology has passed a number of huge stress tests, we hope investment in telehealth increases.
Prior to Covid, virtual hospitals were created to help those living in remote areas, or with mobility issues deal with medical issues. Chronic conditions, such as diabetes, need constant attention - and it’s just not possible to get the right level of care.
What was the first virtual hospital?
There have been virtual hospitals in one form or another ever since we started using technology to communicate. Telemedicine has also been used for decades in clinical settings.
Virtual hospitals in their current form, however, are a more recent development.
The first virtual hospital to be registered in the European Union was The Atuline Virtual Hospital. It was created by a small Finnish company and offered online medical consultation and electronic prescriptions. Development started in 1998 and it was first presented at an international medical device trade fair in 2001.
Australia’s first virtual hospital, RPA Virtual, was launched in February 2020 to care for cystic fibrosis and palliative care patients. When the pandemic escalated, the hospital pivoted to look after COVID-19 patients.
In mid-2020 the New England Virtual Hospital's Joint Virtual Care Centre (JVCC) was unveiled in Armidale, allowing patients to access care without travelling long distances to a major hospital. The trial was fast-tracked to allow the centre to get up and running to help COVID-19 patients.
Virtual hospitals around the world
Today, virtual hospitals can be found all over the globe. Here are a few notable examples.
USA
South Dakota - Avera Health supports small and rural hospitals in 13 states
Missouri - the Virtual Care Center is home to a large medical team, but no patients
UK
Watford Virtual Hospital enables patients to recover at home whilst keeping the respiratory team looking after them fully updated via an app
Australia
Sydney, NSW - St Vincent’s Hospital Virtual @Home was launched in 2021 as St Vincent’s Health Network embarked upon a new service delivery model
Sydney, NSW - RPA Virtual Hospital was launched in early 2020 to tackle increasing demand in Sydney
Germany
North Rhine-Westphalia - A "Virtual hospital“ platform connects more than 200 hospitals in the region, allowing for more decentralised special medical care
India
New Delhi: India Virtual Hospital, a tech-enabled medical concierge service
MedicoExperts is a global virtual hospital offering second opinions and consultations
Canada
Women’s College Hospital (WCH) launched Women’s Virtual – Canada’s first virtual hospital – at the end of 2019
Middle East
A virtual hospital in the UAE is in the planning stage
How has telehealth technology evolved?
We’ve come a long way since the first examples of telehealth, and the leaps forward in technology have been exponential.
In 1906, the inventor of the electrocardiogram published a paper on the telecardiogram. Since the 1920s, the radio has been used to give medical advice to clinics on ships.
Probably one of the earliest and most famous uses of hospital-based telemedicine was in the late 1950s and early 1960s when a closed-circuit television link was established between the Nebraska Psychiatric Institute and Norfolk State Hospital for psychiatric consultations.
Today, we can treat patients remotely with as much attention-to-detail as in-person care. Using monitoring devices and sharing data between healthcare providers helps paint a picture of a patient’s health which only gets more detailed over time.
Telehealth has made huge leaps forward and now matches or exceeds in-hospital care in many scenarios. For example, CareMonitor offers a range of tools to securely collaborate, communicate, monitor and manage patient health:
Population health management dashboard for real-time patient insights
Live remote health monitoring of vital signs via device
Customisable clinical pathways and SMART care plans
Best-practice care plan templates for major disease categories
A mobile app to engage, educate and empower patients
See more CareMonitor features here.
What makes virtual hospitals so effective?
Virtual care is mimicking a physical environment and creating better quality care utilising technology. Virtual care should be as good, if not a better experience than a physical environment.
And so far, that seems to be the case.
The RPA Virtual Hospital’s Patient Experience and Service Development manager, Freya Raffan says: “In seven months, we’ve delivered care to almost 4,000 patients. Overwhelmingly, the response from our patients is that they find the virtual care accessible and our clinicians to be kind and caring.”
Because every step in the virtual healthcare journey can be tracked, healthcare providers have a wealth of information to use when delivering care. A patient with a chronic illness, for example, can go from their specialist, then to a GP and finally to allied health, and each provider will see the same overall picture of the patient’s health instead of fragmented or individualised information.
Smart devices also play a huge role in making virtual hospitals effective. Devices can be integrated with care, and provide healthcare providers or the patient with live alerts when something’s not right or an action needs to be taken. This also helps to empower patients to manage their own conditions, especially for chronic conditions such as diabetes.
Virtual hospitals are also immune to some of the risks posed to physical hospitals - and not just a shortage of beds. As we’ve seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, having less infectious people in the community is crucial for easing the load on the healthcare system.
What about hospital staff?
Virtual hospitals can help to ease the cost to hospitals, and also to the mental and physical health of hospital staff.
In 2017 Deloitte conducted a report into the hospital workforce in Europe, which included a survey of 1,364 clinicians working in hospitals across 11 countries. The report found:
“The majority of doctors in eight out of the 11 countries said that their workload had become more difficult to manage compared to five years before, and the majority of nurses in 10 out of the 11 countries held the same view.
Around half of all doctors and nurses indicated that workload pressures were having a negative effect on their mental and physical health, and 32% were thinking of leaving their profession.”
The same report also concluded that:
“Rising labour costs and staff shortages constrain the ability of health systems to meet their population’s healthcare needs. Nineteen EU countries report difficulties with the supply of a sufficient healthcare workforce, with problems in recruitment, retention, geographical distribution, and the skills balance of the workforce.”
What’s stopping more hospitals from going virtual?
Sadly we’re still seeing a few barriers preventing physical hospitals from integrating virtual care into their business model. The big one is the difficulty (sometimes real, sometimes perceived) of integrating a virtual care offering into their existing processes. This isn’t helped by our fragmented healthcare system, which doesn’t always incentivise innovation and adaptation.
The other is on the patient side. Some people have fears around the quality of care. Am I going to be as well looked-after virtually as I have been in the hospital? As the good news stories about virtual hospital care continue to be told, we should see these fears somewhat eased.
What does the future hold?
Virtual hospitals have many advantages over traditional hospitals, and we should see their usage continue to rise. I also hope to see more traditional hospitals integrating a virtual offering into their remit.
There will always be a place for in-person care, but there are some situations where remote healthcare is much more appropriate and effective. If the past is anything to go by, the future is virtual - and healthcare facilities that are early adopters will see the greatest benefit.
At CareMonitor, our core focus is virtual care. That’s our specialty, and our people are experts in understanding and helping our customers deliver excellent care in a virtual setting. We can work with you to integrate virtual care in a way that doesn’t mean ripping up all of your existing processes.
If you’d like to talk about integrating CareMonitor’s Virtual Hospital Solutions into your facility, please get in touch.