Best Buy is continuing its push into home healthcare with the latest announcement coming out of Mass General Brigham. One of the largest healthcare providers within the state of Massachusetts and one of the nation’s leading biomedical research facilities, Mass General Brigham announced it will be working together with Best Buy to scale and support its Home Hospital initiative.

The latest partnership build upon a long line of partnerships with healthcare providers since Best Buy first announced it would be moving into the home healthcare space after a year of financial decline following a pandemic highpoint. A partnership with Geisinger made earlier in September saw the program grow after what was called an initial success by Best Buy.

As per a description by Mass General Brigham, the organization’s Home Hospital program “delivers care for patients who would otherwise need to be hospitalized for conditions such as heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), infections and more.”

Through the care of nurses, paramedics, advanced practice providers, physicians and other clinicians, the structure of the Home Hospital model aims to give patients access to the same best-in-class services received at Mass General Brigham’s medical centers.

Debora Di Sanzo, President of Best Buy Health, states “More people than ever before are comfortable with the idea of receiving care in their homes, but we know that bringing care across that threshold isn’t as easy as it sounds.”

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“Together, Best Buy Health and Mass General Brigham will create long lasting solutions that will support the rapid growth of the care at home market and all of those who play key roles in delivering quality care in the home to patients who need and deserve it.” 

According to Mass General Brigham, the organization will work alongside Best Buy to “develop customized systems and capabilities to enhance the experience for patients receiving Home Hospital care as well as for the multi-dimensional care team that provides it.”

Additionally, Mass General Brigham will utilize Best Buy’s existing technology and support services which include Current Health, the company’s proprietary care at home platform, logistics management, service management, and Lively Mobile Plus, the company’s personal emergency response system (PERS) device.

Mass General Brigham asserts that this technology-enabled clinical delivery model will expand access to Massachusetts residents choosing to receive acute-level hospital care in the comfort of their home.

The collaboration also aims to address one of the biggest challenges the healthcare industry faces today — workforce shortages. According to Mass General Brigham, the care creates quality health outcomes, is popular with patients and caregivers and studies show it lowers mortality rates, reduces hospital readmissions and decreases lengths of stay.

Heather O’Sullivan, president of Healthcare at Home at Mass General Brigham sees the current collaboration with Best Buy as “building the integrated healthcare system of the future across the entire continuum of patient care needs.”

As part of this relationship, Best Buy Health and Mass General Brigham will also engage with and make significant investments in the community to enable the next generation of the Healthcare at Home workforce.

This will come in the form of equitable, academic opportunities for individuals interested in pursuing nursing, paramedic and digital technology careers by offering scholarships to students choosing the at-home setting of care as their desired professional environment.

They will also work to bring care in the home to the forefront of curriculum within these industries to further support the growing home healthcare model.

While home technology and the CI industry has had a longstanding relationship with health and wellness as a concept, healthcare-focused technologies have been few and far between apart from a few niche elements found in products like Baracoda’s smart bathmat or Toto’s high-tech wellness toilet. In more recent years, however, health tech has made its interest in the CI industry more well known with moves like the high-profile acquisition of Sound United by healthcare tech company Masimo.

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