Best Buy’s Geek Squad will set up remote monitoring technology and educate patients on how to use the devices.
Best Buy Health is partnering with Atrium Health to enhance Atrium’s hospital-at-home program with advanced support for remote-monitoring technology. Atrium Health, which is part of Advocate Health, operates one of the largest home-based care programs in the United States. Through the program, which Atrium launched in 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, patients are monitored remotely through wearable technology, meet with providers virtually and receive in-person visits from Atrium care providers.
Best Buy, the electronics retail giant, and Atrium have collaborated for several years on initiatives that focus on improving patient care through better technology and data insights. Under this partnership, Best Buy’s Geek Squad will set up monitoring technology and educate patients on how to use the devices.
The Geek Squad staff will be specially trained in health technology. “They won't be necessarily the same team that’s doing your home theater,” said Deborah Di Sanzo, president of Best Buy Health. “When we talk about helping people with technology in their homes, that’s what Best Buy has done for years. We’re never going to provide health care but, with Atrium Health, we want to help enable health care at home for everyone. It’s getting the devices to the home when Atrium Health [or] the patient needs them.”
This partnership is part of Best Buy’s larger strategy to claim a deeper stake in remote-patient monitoring. The retailer began investing heavily in health care services in 2018, with its $800 million purchase of GreatCall Inc., a senior citizen-focused health products maker. In 2019, it acquired Critical Signal Technologies, a remote-monitoring service for senior citizens and, in 2021, it purchased the telehealth and at-home, patient-monitoring platform Current Health for $400 million. Best Buy intends to use its Current Health hub to monitor Atrium Health patients.
Earlier this month, Best Buy announced remote-patient monitoring partnerships with Mount Sinai Health System, Langone Health and Geisinger Health System.