Maintaining the Link Between Patients and Their Families During the COVID Pandemic Using Visio: Iterative Development...

Access to hospitals has been dramatically restricted during the COVID 19 pandemic. As a result, the patients were unable to communicate with their families other than through virtual communication channels. A still significant number of patients, which do not have access to modern videoconference tools, were completely isolated. As a result, the University Hospitals of Geneva decided to implement a Visio conference system inside their patient app ecosystem to allow every patient to remain connected. This article presents the iterative development of the solution in order to respond to the specific timely constraint of the situations as well as its evaluation by the patients and caregivers. Two iterations of the tool have been developed. The first relied on an existing commercial platform whereas the second is a fully integrated solution in our patient app ecosystem. The very positive evaluation at the first stage by more than 300 patients, relatives and caregivers convinced us to invest additional effort to provide a fully integrated solution. The second version, evaluated by 16 patients, confirmed that the Visio reaches its objective of reducing isolation during hospitalization. This initiative is completely in line with the objective of the hospital of providing human centered care.