These walkie-talkies, originally designed for kids by a company called Relay, are for patients. Schiffman and his colleague Tamantha Fenster, an obstetrician and gynecologist at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medicine, were trying to devise a low-cost way for families of COVID-19 patients to communicate with their loved ones in intensive care. Video chat was proving to be too depressing for families and too time-intensive for nurses. Walkie-talkies had the potential benefit of letting family members talk to a patient whenever they wanted without the help of a nurse. The experiment to connect COVID-19 patients with their families has now blossomed into a new hospital program called the VoiceLove Project that has the ability to connect patients in all kinds of circumstances with their family. So far, the Relay devices have been deployed across 10 care units at New York Presbyterian, reaching dozens of patients.