The app, called TeleHome, saw a soft launch in May and is now being rolled out more widely. Hospitals request one-time logins to install and log into the app on a device. From there, a patient can use the device to text a link to anyone. When opened, that link will launch a video chat in an Internet browser, no device compatibility needed.
COVID Tech Connect started out providing hardware like laptops and smartphones to hospitals free of charge so that patients could chat with loved ones who weren’t allowed to visit them in person. However, one of the biggest hurdles was that the device the patient used had to be compatible with their loved one’s device(s). TeleHome is the solution.
“The idea for TeleHome was born out of conversations that the COVID Tech Connect team was having with hospitals about the specific use case of using smart devices to connect patients in hospital settings,” COVID Tech Connect Product Director Elien Becque told TechCrunch. “The whole point of TeleHome really was to make our mission scalable beyond just the physical devices.”
