To handle a sudden rise in critically ill patients, many hospitals have had to expand into temporary care areas that lack the full infrastructure of traditional hospital settings. This raised an important question: without a standard nurse call system, how could patients reach their caregivers?

When Massachusetts established Boston Hope, a 1,000-bed field hospital inside the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center for low-acuity and recovering COVID-19 patients, hospital leaders tackled this problem with creativity.

Within just a few days, the team implemented a cloud-based communication system that relied on hospital-loaned tablets, allowing patients to send requests directly to caregivers’ smartphones.

“We didn’t have call bells… but we needed a way to hear from the patients. Two-way communication with the patient is key.”
— Dr. Matthew Hutter, Gastrointestinal Surgeon, Massachusetts General Hospital and Chief of Clinical Operations, Boston Hope Hospital