The NHS has heralded a 'new era' of healthcare that will see hundreds of thousands of patients treated at home to avoid lengthy hospital stays.
From September, 10,000 patients a day will be cared for on 'virtual wards', using wearable devices that allow doctors to monitor their vital signs remotely.
Health chiefs believe the expansion of the scheme, already the largest in the world, will free up hospital capacity and prevent another winter A&E crisis.
Every NHS region has set up virtual wards for frail over 65s, including dementia patients, and for respiratory conditions such as asthma or lung disease.
From this month the scheme will cover under 18s, allowing terminally ill children to stay at home with their families.
Amanda Pritchard, the NHS chief executive, said that their world-leading virtual wards programme marked a new era of NHS care and was a prime example of how the NHS has embarked on the latest technology and innovation to meet patients' needs over the last 75 years.
She said research showed that people who were treated at home recovered at the same rate or faster than those treated in a hospital with the added benefit of being able to be with their loved ones or carers.
A newspaper outlet reported last year how the NHS intends to expand the 'hospital at home' scheme to treat 25,000 patients a day by next March.
Unfortunately, virtual wards will go with virtual doctors and nurses, and thousands of people will die needlessly, no doubt because they consider us irritating patients and we seem such a nuisance to the health care system.
Once upon a time we used to have community nursing staff, but that dwindled off gradually. Now we'll all be sitting at home connected to smart devices while the NHS staff twiddle their thumbs, but our National Insurance contributions won't go down, in fact, they'll probably ask for more money.
Next, we'll be having do-it-yourself prostate examinations.
Virtual healing, I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Virtual wards so that when you die in your own home the statistics show that fewer people are dying in hospital.
There is, of course, no doubt that patients heal much better at home in their own environment, and recovering at home might be good in some instances, but not all instances. Those patients will have to meet certain criteria, like having somebody at home with them, and access gained easily if the patient has to be brought back into the hospital speedily, but of course, this won't be the case as the NHS attempt to cut corners, but we all know that when corners are cut, catastrophic problems occur, and this sounds wonderful, but thousands of OAPs don't have a PC or a smartphone, but who cares anyway!
I guess that if you're in your own home, you might not pick up those nasty infections you seem to pick up in hospitals, but then people's homes aren't always sanitary enough to be hospital wards, and how are they going to administer medicine drips and tests? Perhaps you'll get a virtual one and pretend medicine.
The concept sounds promising, but it will fail, due to the fact that the money needed to finance and run it will ultimately run out or get cut at some stage, or the medical equipment and tech support will prove too costly.
Even pacemakers are Bluetooth enabled and monitored remotely by the hospital cardio team. I guess it saves people from having to go for regular checkups, but if they were to be hacked, we might have numerous people with pacemakers dead on the streets or in their homes.
Virtual anything is virtual insanity!
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