Best Buy Health and Mass General Brigham announced the tech giant would provide technology, human-centered aid and omnichannel logistics to scale and support the health system's acute home-based care offering, Home Hospital, and Medicare-certified home health business, Home Care.

Home Hospital provides home healthcare for patients with conditions such as infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease who would otherwise need hospitalization. The care team includes advanced practice providers, paramedics, nurses, physicians and other clinicians. 

Home Care supports Medicare patients who are homebound due to an injury or illness. 

The partners will develop customized tools using technology and clinical expertise for patients and their care teams to support Home Hospital and Home Care, which are both part of Mass General's Healthcare at Home portfolio. 

Mass General will also leverage Best Buy's existing technology and support services, including its home care and remote patient monitoring platform Current Health and personal emergency response device dubbed Lively Mobile Plus, which can detect falls and help patients contact one of the company's Urgent Response Agents. 

"Through this collaboration, Best Buy Health will leverage its technology expertise and skills to enable a better experience surrounding care at home for eastern Massachusetts residents," said Diana Gelston, chief commercial officer at Best Buy Health, told MobiHealthNews in an email. "Together, we will also invest in the community to help inspire young adults looking for careers within technology and healthcare industries."

THE LARGER TREND

Best Buy acquired Current Health in 2021 for $400 million and Lively Mobile Plus parent company GreatCall in 2018 for $800 million. Great Call was rebranded as Lively in 2021.

In March, Best Buy partnered with Charlotte, N.C.-based Atrium Health to pair the health system's established telehealth and hospital-at-home programs with Best Buy's in-home services and supply chain to develop new hospital-at-home offerings.

In July, Gelston sat down with MobiHealthNews to discuss how collaborations shape Best Buy's healthcare offerings. 

"As we think about expanding our footprint, as we think about expanding our partnerships with health systems particularly, we look to ones that are on the leading edge, but also who need help in expanding their reach of care into areas that may be a challenge," Gelston said.  

The retail giant has purchased and invested in several home health companies. It acquired remote senior-monitoring service Critical Signal Technologies in 2019 and, last year, invested in Coeus.health, a cloud-based IT and logistics platform that coordinates in-home digital health devices and data.