Virtual wards (also known as hospital at home) allow patients to get the care they need at home safely and conveniently, rather than being in hospital. The NHS is increasingly introducing virtual wards to support people at the place they call home, including care homes.

In today’s podcast, web editor Nicole Raleigh speaks with Dr Samuel Ewing, global head of pharma partnerships at Doccla, about the next generation of digital tools such as wearable medical devices, as well as remote patient monitoring and digital healthcare generally.

Although wearables go back decades, the true benefit for patients and healthcare systems allows home monitoring. Explaining a current COPD example, it’s about reducing hospital admissions, says Ewing, thereby reducing burden, and its also about more individualised care, on which point Ewing explores the current physician grading scale of Parkinson’s symptoms compared to remote and daily patient monitoring.

In short, technology is transforming healthcare today, but there’s still a lot of work to do. Yet, Ewing caveats against ‘hysteria’ around data management and posits that there is perhaps too much concern over data privacy.