Virtual Wards and Hospital-at-Home in Cardiovascular Care: Safety, Equity, and the Role of AI

Cardiovascular care is increasingly incorporating digitally enabled virtual wards and hospital-at-home models in response to bed capacity constraints, rising costs, workforce pressures, and patient preferences for care at home. However, adoption has outpaced the evidence needed to establish their safety, effectiveness, scalability, and sustainability. Key questions remain about clinical outcomes, patient selection, deterioration and escalation, healthcare utilisation, and equity. Emerging evidence suggests that selected patients may achieve outcomes comparable to those receiving conventional inpatient care, but results vary according to service design, staffing, monitoring, and local infrastructure. Evidence remains limited for patients with frailty, multimorbidity, and complex social needs. Artificial intelligence may support triage, risk prediction, workflow coordination, and resource optimisation, although concerns remain regarding validation, bias, interpretability, accountability, and data governance. Further research is needed to determine how virtual cardiovascular care can be delivered safely and equitably at scale.This Research Topic aims to evaluate the implementation, safety, effectiveness, equity, and sustainability of virtual wards and hospital-at-home models in cardiovascular care. It will examine their effects on clinical outcomes, patient and caregiver experience, healthcare utilisation, workforce requirements, and costs. Contributions may explore which patients and conditions are suitable for home-based management, how deterioration should be identified and managed, and which service characteristics support successful implementation. The Research Topic also considers the role of cardiovascular nurses in remote assessment, patient education, care coordination, monitoring, clinical decision-making, and escalation, alongside the use of artificial intelligence in these settings.To gather further insights in the design, evaluation, implementation, and governance of virtual cardiovascular care, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:o Implementation science and models of careo Safety, clinical governance, and escalation pathwayso Real-world cardiovascular outcomes and hospital transferso Patient selection, frailty, multimorbidity, and caregiver involvemento Cardiovascular nursing roles in remote assessment, education, monitoring, care coordination, self-management support, and escalationo Workforce models, competencies, workload, and professional experiences in virtual cardiovascular nursingo Remote monitoring, wearable devices, and digital biomarkerso Artificial intelligence for triage, deterioration prediction, decision support, and resource optimisationo AI validation, interpretability, bias, accountability, and governanceo Health economics, cost-effectiveness, resource utilisation, and workforce implicationso Digital inclusion, ethnicity, socioeconomic inequalities, and differential outcomeso Patient experiences, acceptability, trust, and shared decision-makingo Interoperability, data governance, cybersecurity, and service integrationo Policy, regulation, commissioning, and sustainable scaling** Topic Editor Prof. Andre Ng declares research fellow support from Boston Scientific and Abbott Medical to Unviersity of Leicester, and is co-inventor on two granted patents held by University of Leicester. No other Topic Editors declare any conflicts of interest. Topic editors: Ahmed Kotb, G. Andre Ng, Rajiv Sankaranarayanan Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85678/virtual-wards-and-hospital-at-home-in-cardiovascular-care-safety-equity-and-the-role-of-ai