Today with David McCullagh
How virtual wards could help reduce the pressures on bed capacity
20 Apr 2026
Chapter 1: What are virtual wards and how do they operate?
Now, did you know that we have virtual wards operating in every health region in the country? These allow patients to get certain hospital-level care at home through the use of cutting-edge technology. With significant bed capacity issues across our health service, hospital management now sees this as one way of alleviating some of the pressure.
It doesn't suit every patient, but where it has been used, there's almost 100% satisfaction ratings. Brian O'Connell has been to St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin for us. He joins me now. Morning, Brian. Brian, tell us how this works.
It's not often we get 100% satisfaction ratings, is it, in our health service? Yes, indeed. It's well documented we have a bed capacity issue here.
Chapter 2: How do virtual wards alleviate bed capacity issues?
So just 2.9 beds per 1,000 people. EU average is 4.6. So anything we can do to lessen that pressure is obviously welcomed. Technology is one way. Now, this doesn't suit every patient. But say, for example, patients who require monitoring before or after a procedure, perhaps they're given certain medication they need to be monitored.
So this advancement in virtual wards means we can monitor patients remotely. We have trained staff and medics on site And I went into this virtual ward. One of them is in St. Vincent's. There were no beds, just staff who were behind a desktop computer looking at a patient's real-time progress on large screens. And then the patients are mostly at home. So that's the beauty of it.
It's really medical care of the future, which has been delivered today. Now, I went into this virtual ward, but I want to bring you first some patients who were treated using this remote technology with 24-7 care. clinical monitoring from Vincents. First up, Mary Holden. Mary is a terminal cancer patient for the last 10 years. She told me a little bit about her experience using the ward.
Well, I needed to have a diagnostic procedure done quite quickly and my oncologist didn't have a bed available on the ward to admit me. And she told me about the virtual ward.
So just talk me through how it actually worked in your case then.
OK, well, once I went through the admission phase, which is an administrative phase, I went home with my kit, which is basically an iPad and various pieces of monitoring equipment so that my temperature could be monitored for spikes, my blood pressure could be monitored, my heart rate could be monitored. And I was asked to submit...
the figures for the checks that I took morning and evening through this iPad, and they would be analysed by the virtual ward team. And if anything was amiss, they'd get in touch with me. And the blissful thing about it in my case was, one, I didn't have any spikes of anything. But had I had a spike,
uh say of my temperature and i needed admitting to an actual bed i would be admitted but bypassing the ed which was the most marvelous benefit because you know for somebody whose immune system is compromised sitting in an ed you're liable to pick up all sorts of bugs
And the other thing for somebody like me, where I have cancer that has spread to my bones, I would also be in bed and be losing muscle. Everybody kept me informed and there was clearly continuity within the various sections of the hospital along the way.
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Chapter 3: What patient conditions are suitable for virtual ward care?
Tell us about that.
Well, everyone was at pains to say this isn't designed to limit or reduce your level of care. It's not suitable for very highly complex cases. So I went into this unit, which is on the campus in Vincennes. It's in one room, several desktop computers, a large screen. Dozens of patients were being monitored in their homes.
And first up in this clip is Paul Murphy from DocLab, which is the company behind this tech. And we'll also hear Ruth Kidney, who's clinical nurse manager of this unit in Vincennes.
So we're walking to the virtual ward hub within St. Vincent's Hospital. and in front of us now we have desks, stations with nurses working on, they're managing their patients who are all at home at the moment and on the main wall we've got two master screens giving an idea of what beds are being occupied and the list of patients that are out in their home.
These are virtual beds but the difference is these patients are actually in their own homes but they're being seen as inpatient beds.
The data that's been monitored is being fed back in here to this virtual ward and we can see the nursing staff are here and they are looking at the data as it comes in.
And on the screen on the clinical dashboard they can see a list of all their patients, they can interact with those patients, they can communicate with those patients, they can video call those patients and what they're looking for is their observations and the patient reported outcomes coming back from the patient to make sure that everything is stable and everything looks correct.
So how many patients at the moment are being monitored at home?
There's 37 at the moment. So that's 37 beds, essentially, that have been freed up? Correct, yes. So all of these patients will otherwise be in the hospital receiving acute care.
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Chapter 4: How is patient monitoring conducted in virtual wards?
This is the kit here.
Yeah, so once they've been cleared by the consultant to be onboarded, we go and we welcome the patient. We actually go through the kit and nobody's under pressure to come to the service. Basically, in operation, we have a blood pressure monitor, a tablet, which is very much foolproof we've had. anything from a 16-year-old to a 95-year-old on the system.
Then they have an SpO2 monitor which measures their oxygen levels. Also they have a cardiac, if they're a cardiac patient, this will actually automatically send a six-lead ECG into our system where we can automatically assess that patient and if an ambulance needs to go out directly to them, it'll be there within minutes.
It's not to replace, because you're 40 years nursing, so this isn't to take the jobs of a nurse. It's not to replace what happens day in, day out in hospitals.
I have to say we have probably better connection with patients here on the virtual ward purely because we're able to connect with them immediately when they make that phone call.
That's Ruth Kidney there, Clinical Nurse Manager of the Virtual Ward. And Brian, I know you spoke to Professor Donal O'Shea because some people listening might think this is a way for the HSE to avoid increasing capacity. But before we hear from him, you did speak to another patient who was treated virtually.
Yes, I spoke to Alan Whelan, who presented to Vincent's with a very severe infection. And then he realised he could have some of his treatment offsite using this technology, as he explains.
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Chapter 5: What technology is used for monitoring patients at home?
What happened was there was a specialist came to me and he said, well, going to try a different medical approach here, different antibiotics. So that, again, facilitated being remote, if you like.
you know the big thing for me was a you can go home b you can bypass a and e and and c you know you're in your own home you're in your own home environment in your own bed eating your own food when you want it as well which is a key thing you know you've not been woken up at six in the morning with the best wheel in the world uh it you don't get a great night's sleep in a hospital and then obviously you're woken up early in the morning and things like that
so essentially you're on the ipad are you sending in results is that how it works well what was really beautiful about it because um my initial reaction would be well look i'm reasonably technically competent but how's this going to work for for the older i mean i've elderly parents the the devices that you were using and in my case it was quite simple it's blood pressure it was um
blood oxygen and temperature thermometer but it's all Bluetooth connected and it's it's literally it has its own Wi-Fi it sends the thing back remotely you don't have to do anything you just press the screen one after the other it couldn't have been simpler you're thinking I mean we're all aware the health service is under pressure so anything that relieves pressure on beds you think well this is a great news story so it's great that it'll free up resources for people as well
Alan Whelan there. And Brian, from what he's saying, there's lots of positives with this, not just bed capacity.
Yeah, I mean, the patient benefits you can probably see are compelling. Improved rest, you know, reduced stress, for example, because you're at home. Better diet, perhaps. But then again, Professor Donald O'Shea, who I spoke to, he's clinical lead.
He wanted to outline the benefits, obviously, but also wanted to stress the fact because our health service is under so much pressure in terms of capacity, This isn't a replacement service, it's more a support. So Professor Donal O'Shea, as I said, Clinical Lead for Medicine and Emergency Medicine at Vincennes.
I asked Professor O'Shea if this was an idea that really caught his eye from the start.
Not straight away, actually. No, it was only when I actually went into and saw the virtual ward and realised that actually it's not virtual. It's really a hospital at home and you're in your bed at home, but you have the contact.
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