Re:View 3 October 2025
Research Manager and Head of Health
There are few words that truly encapsulate the party conference experience. For attendees, they are a heady mix of people, panels and parties. For politicians, they are a crucial moment in the political calendar to set out your stall to the public. And for the party in question, they are a critical opportunity to energise – or oftentimes deflate – their activist base (as well as raise a fair amount of cash).
All eyes are always on the party leader’s, and in this case Prime Minister’s, speech. Major set piece speeches hold a warm place in the hearts of politicos – iconic speeches can resonate long after the moment has passed, leaving an enduring impact on political culture. But while speeches are about narrative, persuasion, and political theatre, they are also a prime opportunity to introduce meaningful policies that the public can resonate with.
Every year the party will set aside a few ‘rabbit out of the hat’ policies to announce at conference. In a unique turn of events, we were delighted to see one of the policies that we exclusively proposed in our Hospital of the Future programme – an entirely virtual hospital – announced in the most significant political set piece of the year.
Like many sensible readers surely are, I am often sceptical of think tanks claiming responsibility for individual policies. That said, having been *checks notes* the only organisation to ever propose this, and involved in shaping the policy at NHS England, we feel entitled to claim at least a small role in its development.
Crucially, this endows us with an unusual amount of expertise in this nascent area of healthcare. As nearly a world first, the policy implications of an entirely virtual trust are as yet, relatively untapped.
Indeed, what makes the virtual hospital model so compelling is the way it sidesteps many of the usual policy hurdles that come with expanding healthcare capacity. Unlike a traditional hospital — which can take usually at least three to seven years to materialise, but often more — a virtual service can be designed and scaled at speed, with far lower overheads. Moorfields’ virtual A&E is a striking example: 32 digital waiting rooms, two major services seeing 40–50 patients daily, all established in under a month. Video consultations went live within 48 hours of the first lockdown.
Because it delivers a narrower range of services than a bricks-and-mortar hospital, with faster throughput and lower fixed costs, a virtual hospital can reach many more patients at a fraction of the expense. Freed from physical limits and geography, staff can also work flexibly, offering care from wherever they are.
The hospital has barely adapted since the inception of the NHS. But this is a clear and welcome departure from that model: NHS Online is the first step towards transforming the health service to meet the demands of the modern world, not the post-war world.