The South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust (SEHSCT) is leading regional innovation through its Heart Failure at Home programme, delivered in partnership with Feebris, BT, and Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). Launched in October 2024, the programme enables patients with heart failure and palliative-care needs to receive hospital-level care at home, supported by digital monitoring, structured clinical review, and multidisciplinary coordination.
HIRANI were thrilled to be at an in-person learning event held on 6 October 2025 at the QIIC Hub. This brought together clinical and academic partners, digital developers, and service users to share insights from the programme’s first year. Speakers included Ruth Grey and Fiona Dixon (SEHSCT), Professor Michael Quinn (QUB), Dr Elina Naydenova (Feebris), and Frank Doherty, who gave the vital patient and public involvement perspective. The session reviewed emerging evidence, explored operational enablers, and asked how data, learning, and partnerships could be embedded to support scale-up.
Heart failure remains a common cause of hospital admission and re-admission. Conventional pathways can often require regular face-to-face reviews, including for medication optimisation, creating bottlenecks in both outpatient and inpatient settings.
There is evidence showing that rapid initiation and close follow-up of guideline-directed therapy, combined with digitally enabled care-at-home models, can deliver good outcomes. Virtual wards, services that provide hospital-level care at home, have been shown to reduce readmissions and length of stay while maintaining high patient satisfaction. Building on this evidence, SEHSCT’s initiative applies national learning in a local context, combining specialist oversight, digital infrastructure, and structured data collection to support recovery at home and reduce reliance on inpatient capacity.
The first-year review highlighted promising results:
Improved patient experience: participants reported greater confidence in managing symptoms, supported by regular digital feedback and clinician contact.
Reduced unplanned contact: fewer calls to helplines suggested better adherence and earlier recognition of deterioration.
The platform enabled structured capture of data for review by the clinical team, and family and carer involvement proved a critical factor in sustaining engagement and overcoming digital barriers.
Challenges mirrored those seen in other virtual-care programmes, including fragmented data systems, variation in digital maturity, and ongoing workforce pressures. Speakers emphasised the need for sustainable governance, dedicated evaluation capacity, and regional innovation infrastructure to maintain fidelity and quality as models expand.
The Health Service Executive (HSE) in the Republic of Ireland launched its National Virtual Ward Programme in 2024 with similar objectives of supporting earlier discharge and providing home monitoring under hospital supervision.
The SEHSCT programme aligns closely with this approach, creating opportunities for collaboration. Shared evaluation frameworks, interoperable data standards, and joint research could accelerate collective learning and position the region as a connected testbed for person-centred, technology-enabled care.
The Heart Failure at Home programme demonstrates that virtual-ward principles can be operationalised to achieve measurable improvements in outcomes, workforce experience, and service efficiency. Consistent with national and international evidence, the early findings highlight reduced dependence on inpatient care, improved patient confidence, and stronger continuity of care.
To build on this success, the region must continue investing in data infrastructure, evaluation capacity, and collaborative networks, turning promising pilots into sustainable, system-wide transformation. Care at home should not be the exception but the foundation of modern, equitable healthcare.
