Firm donates baby monitors to hospitals

‘We saw this as the least we could do,’ said Rino Martino, VTech’s national account manager

A cordless phone manufacturer donated at least 70 baby monitors to Hamilton intensive care units and emergency rooms last month as part of a broader national effort to bridge the communication gap between health-care staff and COVID-19 patients in isolation.

VTech Technologies Canada, based out of Hong Kong with domestic headquarters in Vancouver, says it’s donated more than 550 monitors to healthcare facilities across Canada. The monitors are being used in negative pressure rooms where limited numbers of staff can tend to isolated patients.

“Some hospitals don’t have an intercom system and are currently using white boards or pen and paper stuck to windows to communicate with runners outside the isolation rooms,” said Vincci Lau, a company spokesperson.

“The use of baby monitors allows the ICU the unique ability to safely see and communicate into the rooms.”

Rino Martino, VTech’s national account manager, said the company was first made aware of a need in Hamilton after an old colleague reached out. The colleague’s sister, who’s an ICU nurse at the Juravinski Hospital, said the monitors would help staff hear life-saving alarms in the COVID-19 isolation rooms.

“Because those rooms are soundproof, the monitors minimize the number of times staff have to enter and leave the room, which also conserved the use of valuable PPE,” Martino said. “We saw this as the least we could do.”

VTech donated 20 baby monitors to Juravinski’s ICU and 10 to its ER. It later donated 20 to the Hamilton Health Sciences’ pediatric ICU, 10 to the Hamilton General Hospital ER, and another 10 to St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton.

PHOTO COURTESY OF VTECH CANADA Staff at the Juravinski Hospital's intensive care unit pose with some of the 20 baby monitors gifted to them by VTech Canada.