The current shelter in place orders are having a significant impact on communication between care center residents and their family members. Care center workers are doing their best to facilitate this type of communication, but in the current emergency situation they do not have sufficient time or resources to ensure that communication happens with the desired frequency and quality. In addition, many of the people involved, such as family members, residents, nurses, do not have the knowledge needed to use the applications and software of today's technology.

In response to this situation, Matia Fundazioa, together with Ceit and the MASMOVIL Group, has launched a joint project whose aim is to use technology to improve communication between care center residents and their family members by improving quality of the connections made (a minimum of three per week) between each resident and their loved ones.

To make this project a reality, Ceit and the MASMOVIL Group are making the following technical and human resources available to senior care centers:

• Hardware: equipment (e.g. state-of-the-art wireless routers, mobile phones and tablets) so that they can be easily operated in the residential care centers, both for health care workers and the residents themselves.

• Software: different remote management programs and video call software will be installed  so calls can be remotely managed by external volunteers.

• Communications: quality connections for both landline and mobile service to support video calls on various devices.

• Management: ad hoc training of volunteers who work remotely from their homes, thereby avoiding physical contact and the possibility of contagion, in order to support communication between family members and residents and minimize the need for staff members to be on hand to facilitate calls.

In the pilot that is taking place at the Lamourous–Matia Fundazioa senior care center, MASMOVIL Group is donating wireless routers and latest-generation Samsung Galaxy A10 smartphones, as well as SIM cards with enough data to support voice. For its part, CEIT is in charge of providing the appropriate software and the needed call management software so staff members are freed for other tasks. During the pilot phase at this care center, various scenarios and ways of operating will be studied, involving both seniors who are mostly autonomous and those who suffer from cognitive decline and are more dependent.

The results and conclusions of this pilot phase will be shared with other senior centers in order to maximize the study and make the model replicable so it can be extended to third parties.