• Guillaume Sacco, Sébastien Lléonart, Romain Simon, Frédéric Noublanche, Cédric Annweiler, and TOVID Study Group.
• Department of Geriatric Medicine and Memory Clinic, University Hospital of Angers, Angers, France.
• JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2020 Sep 18; 8 (9): e21845.

BackgroundTechnological communication methods such as telephone calls and video calls can help prevent social isolation and loneliness in frail older adults during confinement.ObjectiveOur objectives were to determine which virtual communication method (ie, telephone call or video call) was preferred by confined older hospital patients and nursing home residents and the variables influencing this preference.MethodsThe TOVID (Telephony Or Videophony for Isolated elDerly) study was a cross-sectional study that was designed to examine the preference between telephone calls and video calls among frail older adults who were either hospitalized in a geriatric acute care unit or institutionalized in a long-term care and nursing home during the COVID-19 confinement period.ResultsA total of 132 older people were surveyed between March 25 and May 11, 2020 (mean age 88.2 years, SD 6.2); 79 (59.8%) were women. Patients hospitalized in the geriatric acute care unit were more able to establish communication independently than residents institutionalized in the long-term care and nursing home (P=.03) and were more satisfied with their communication experiences (P=.02). Overall, older people tended to favor telephone calls (73/132, 55.3%) over video calls (59/132, 44.7%); however, their satisfaction degree was similar regardless of the chosen method (P=.1), with no effect of age (P=.97) or gender (P=.2). In the geriatric acute care unit, the satisfaction degrees were similar for telephone calls (40/41, 98%) and video calls (33/38, 87%) in older patients (P=.10). Conversely, in the long-term care and nursing home, residents were more satisfied with the use of video calls to communicate with their relatives (14/15, 93%) versus the use of telephone calls (6/12, 50%; P=.02).ConclusionsOlder people confined to health care settings were able to complete telephone calls more independently than video calls, and they tended to use telephone calls more often than video calls. The satisfaction degrees were similar with both modalities and even greater with video calls among long-term care and nursing home residents when they were given assistance to establish communication.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT04333849: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04333849.©Guillaume Sacco, Sébastien Lléonart, Romain Simon, Frédéric Noublanche, Cédric Annweiler, TOVID Study Group. Originally published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth (http://mhealth.jmir.org), 18.09.2020.

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