Next year, I will have completed four decades in health care. One of the enduring things you learn with longevity in health care is that the NHS consistently ‘re-invents the wheel’. Introducing shiny new solutions which some of us know are not new and in some cases not that shiny. The latest of these are virtual wards in England, apparently first ‘pioneered’ in March 2020 to prevent emergency admission and to assist with early discharge from hospital.