Provision of Remote Patient Monitoring

Virtual ward services (also known as hospital at home) allow patients of all ages to receive acute-level care safely and conveniently at their usual place of residence, including care homes. These services aim to improve patient experience and outcomes and narrow the gap between demand and capacity for hospital beds, by either preventing avoidable attendances and admissions, or reducing length of stay through early discharge.

A South East Region Virtual Wards Evaluation paper (published May 2024), highlighted that digital integration, if done well, leads to more effective tech enabled virtual wards, whilst barriers to success include insufficient data support and inefficient manual data collection processes.

WSFT are committed to supporting the positive operational impact and clinical effectiveness of our virtual wards through partnership with a best fit Remote Monitoring (RM) platform and supplier. Our incumbent RM supplier contract ends on 1st April 2025, and we require a seamless transition of service to a new RM platform. Through this move we expect to enhance our existing digital capability and continue to benefit through close collaboration and continuous future platform innovation with a new technology partner.

The Trust is looking to procure a three year contract with two optional extension periods of 12 months each. We anticipate contract start being 1st March 2025 as it is critical the new provision is in place before the current contract expires to ensure there is no disruption to patient care.