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Transcript for S1E8: Wearables - Aging at Home (ft. Jean Olive, Best Buy Health)

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>In my office it's OK.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>We're here today with Gene, Olive, Chief Technology officer of Best Buy Health. Gene, thank you so much for joining us today.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Thank you for having me.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>So Gene Best Buy health, a lot of there's a lot of brand recognition across the country for Best Buy. Obviously a new entry, a new entry into the healthcare space. Why did Best Buy enter the healthcare space and elaborating on that theme, why are other retailers entering the space?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Best Buy into that space because Best Buy's purpose isn't to enrich lives through technology, and so with Best Buy health, we enrich lives through technology and providing meaningful connections.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Across the continuum of care. So if you think about it, technologies in the home, right and through the pandemic, we've really ramped up having health in the home. So our purpose at Best Buy health is to enable care at home for everyone. Why is everybody, I think everybody's racing to get into health because one, it's a $14 trillion market. There's lots of opportunity and I think it's also an industry right now that needs.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>It we're in a crisis, right? We spend a lot of money on health care across across the country. However, we still struggle with health inequity. We struggle with enough providers, physicians, nurses in in a in a world after, after the pandemic, that where many of them, you know, is a high level of burnout and high level of stress.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>Is Best Buy health doing anything to address HealthEquity or provider access provider burnout?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Sure. Yeah, we have, we have, we have some initiatives going on with HealthEquity. We are investing in some HealthEquity platforms.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Been really trying to build up a diversity in my minorities are getting into the medical profession. We also have our health, our our tech centers that also bring in emerging talent and they have tech centers that they, the children can come to learn technology, you know, work in the stores and then continue across, you know, their careers in technology space. We also I mean if you think about it.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>When you can enable care at home.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Umm. And you can enable.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Uh, Wellness at home aging at home and care at home across the continuum there are a lot of areas that you can get those devices paid for. For example, our personal emergency response devices, which you know, hang around the neck dependence, they have an emergency response for fall detection. They have fall detection. And they also have an emergency response button. In many cases, those are provided by the payers themselves. So the payers cover.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>That, Umm, device and it has a higher quality of care that enables our aging to age and stay at home versus going into a care facility.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>So you mentioned that device that hangs around the neck. So just in terms of a use case to make this concrete for our listeners, when a customer does fall and presses that button and they're brought to a hospital, is there any interconnectivity between their healthcare profile and the electronic health record with data derived from their wearables and connections to the healthcare delivery systems, the HR?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>I'm not to the health care delivery system, not in that device. You know, you can, you can buy it, it can be a commercial device where it's provided by a payer or you could go into the stores or on the websites and buy that device. So first of all, it has fall detection. So you don't need to press the button to have fault tection and it's a much higher accuracy. It's not, you know, the Apple Watch has fall detection, but you've literally got to be like almost running you know, hit a root and fall. So it has failed detection and also can.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Can tell if you know if if you're about to get a fall and what happens is the device then alerts, goes into our care centers, so our care center agents then know there is an issue. They can dispatch a call to the home or they can dispatch a call to their emergency care, then that is then once the once the patient, I mean once the the person is either dispatched to the hospital or there's a discussion, you know that you know I fell.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>I fell down, but I'm fine. I don't need to go to the hospital. We don't. We don't put that type of invite. We don't put that type of invite. Sorry. That type of information in there health record. Once they get to the hospital. Of course. Then it would become in the health record.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Right.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Right.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>OK, so but Best Buy health is creating a a healthcare profile based on many different wearables and devices at home. Is that how is that information ingested into the EHR when they're presenting at the emergency room?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>That's not on our we're not, that's for that type of device. We do not have that information for our care at home where we have that's all connected through providers. We work with pretty much the four of the Big 10 IDN. We're working with four of the Big 10 IDN right now and that is that is a device that is connected into the health record because that that device is is, is almost like a prescription device, right.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Your provider gives you, you know, prescribes that device for you and then connects, connects you to based on what your your issue is. So that's real, that's real telehealth. So think about it this way.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>You know the there's all continuums, right, there's there's acute care, which is I've had. I've had heart surgery. I have to go home and be managed and monitored for 6 to 8 weeks or I have chronic care that I'm. I'm in a chronic care that I have a a serious issue that I have to be managed all the time or to the to the extreme that you have hospital at home and those variables depends on the amount of care that is provided for you by by your providers.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>By your by your network and your on your in your health insurance network so.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>If I have, I go in. I have, I have COVID instead of being. You know, it's pretty serious, but instead of being, I need to be managed and monitored. So instead of having to go into the hospital and have inpatient, I am given this kit. You know, I go home. This is where Best Buy comes in. Best Buy will come in with our Geek Squad capabilities. Our in home service we have in home service capabilities now, which by the way that is one of the biggest areas that everybody's struggling.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Is it's scalability and the scalability is that the serviceability? Because if you think about if you come home and you have a problem connecting your scale, your digital scale to the tablet so that you can record your weight every day, you're gonna call your call back your doctor's office and the nurse is gonna have to try to triage that. No, that's not there. Specialty, right. The nurses are the ones that say, you know, that you you could call and say, well, my weights gone up. I'm a little concerned versus how do I connect the device. So we would come in.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Set everything up, get everything settled per this prescription. Really, it's like a prescription that the provider pays that you know they need to have blood pressure monitor that we have a cuff that will monitor.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Your body temperature that monitors your heart rate, and so all those the profile is set up based on the patient and then that is monitored independent on the.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>The service that we provide that information then is part of your device history records, right? So that information will be provided and connected into the either the hospital or into one of our chronic care centers.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>So if there's a patient with a a, a digital enabled blood pressure cough, a glucometer, and a scale, that information goes into a Best Buy health profile which is interoperable with electronic health records at four major integrated delivery networks. Is that true?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Yeah, we have many others, but we we have the four, four of the Big 10. Yep. Yep.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>OK, so Best Buy so. So Best Buy health is creating a health profile and that's interacting with electronic health records.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>And do you know are there are there challenges with driving the digital connectivity between that the health profile and the health records or how is that? How does that data connectivity work?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>How are working with Cerner? And we're working with Epic, of course, but for for right now, that connectivity is part of our platform and it's either managed by the, the, the IDN themself. So where they set up the triggers or it's managed by we have a clinical care center that is managed by nurses, license RNS, who then would say you know, then you have alerts, right. So you think of it's like a big dashboard. You know you have 100 patients. I don't know the exact number, but say you have 100 patients.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>And then you know if if weight goes up by 2%, you see a red alert. The nurse would then.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>And are you? The alerts go to both the provider and the patient. Is that true?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Monitor for for the IDN.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Or the idea and can choose to do it themselves right with their own nurses?</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>So pivoting a bit back to the beginning of conversation, you mentioned that Healthcare is a $14 trillion market in the United States. Have you or have there been any unexpected difficulties with entering the healthcare market?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Well, I think there's always difficulties, right? There's the there's the whole, you know, the payer market, right. You know the coding, how are you gonna get paid for how it's, you know, the adoption, you know, this is something different, right? If you you know, if you're an aging, you know you're an aging single person. You know, there's a choice, right? You do you. Are you comfortable enough to be manage yourself at home. You know of course with hospital at home they do have nurses come in every day.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>So there, there. Those are the challenges. Or do you, you know, there's a choice. So she would you rather be in the hospital there's adoption by physicians, there's adoption by consumers.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>And I think, you know, we're just like at the infancy. I think there will be, there is such a constraint in the system right now, right. The hospitals do not have the beds.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>But in at the other senses, people do wanna be home. You know, you eat better, you sleep better, you move more you with your family. Your family can get in and visit you anytime they want. We have those constraints in the hospital now. You know, you have your pets. So I think there's always challenges in something. It's it's a transformation, right? It's a healthcare transformation. So there's gonna be challenges. Every every bit of the way and is also challenges in scaling.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>You mentioned challenges and driving adoption and of course many healthcare delivery systems. Many of our listeners are very concerned with patient engagement and how to create a digital front door and drive adoption of new programs. I'm wondering what's driving adoption of Best Buy health programs, devices, wearables is best. I know that when I've purchased things as a consumer at Best Buy, I enter my phone number at checkout and I have a Best Buy profile and I'll get.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>Coupons in the mail? Are you reaching out to every consumer with a Best Buy phone number registered to see how are you driving adoption and and what extent are you doing outreach to your consumer base?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>We're not doing outreach to our consumer base with the exception of our lively products. So our lively with with the exception of everything that we have in Wellness and course at Best Buy, right, so Best Buy does have you know end to end.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Everything from you know this, the wearables, to scales, to exercise equipment and then we have our lively products which I designed products designed for active aging, right. We have flip phones that have a a health and safety plan to come with them. So you have an emergency response button on the phone. We have a smart version of that phone and of course we have the pendants. That's where we where we've leveraged Best Buy. We've also working to leverage best buys, you know best.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>The class, supply chain and logistics and then but on the health side, we are not, we are not. You know we we're not ready yet, we're still building and growing and we don't. So you're not gonna go into Best Buy and see like you see like the Geek Squad. You're not gonna see like Best Buy health. You won't see that. Yeah, we're not there yet good. Working with providers on the care at home.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>To what extent does best from to is Best Buy and Best Buy health? Are they separate corporate entities or are they?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>No, no. Same, same entity, same entity at this time. So it is, it's like a business unit within Best Buy.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>So what would you say differentiates Best Buy health from other large tech and retailers entering the space? For example, Google Health, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, Walmart taking on risk, what differentiates Best Buy health.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Well, we we are focused on care at home. So you won't see Best Buy, you won't go into Best Buy and be like, you know CVS Health where you we have a provider in the store. So we're not going in that. We are leveraging technology across the continuum of care starting with Wellness at home, going into aging at home and then care at home. And that is a differentiator and that we have to cross that continuum and we have the ability of our products to be from.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>You know being well to living well as you age to being cared for when you're not, when you're not well.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>We also have the Geek Squad in that we are building up that capability to be able to service your tech in your home. That's something that no, nobody has. I at this time I we have credibility in it. So we have, you know many agents, you know, thousands of agents who are experienced and going in the home were working on a program. So they can be certified to go in the home for health. And there's a, there's a big interest in that, right. If you think about that, everybody's got somebody in their life.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Most everybody that you know that we're that we're caregivers for, whether it's your parents or your grandparents and so that that's really that's one of our differentiators plus we have the you know the supply chain and logistics.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>So you you're talking about driving adoption and differentiating yourself with?</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>With providing care at home, I'd like you to elaborate, tell me a little bit about Best Buy health strategy that has driven partnerships with large healthcare delivery systems, particularly as they've begun creating ecommerce platforms that sell some Best Buy products.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Yeah. So we we, yeah, we do have an, we have some white label working with IDN so that we sell some of the Best Buy products in the white label space. We also are you know like I said before partnering with IDN. So I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that question.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>So for example, on Parkview, Health is a large healthcare delivery system in the Midwest and they have a partnership with Best Buy Health where they have an e-commerce platform and they sell glucometers and scales. So tell me about the strategy that drove that partnership and what you're looking to achieve and if the health systems are demanding, Best Buy health service and reaching out to you or if you're reaching out to our healthcare systems, what's driving those partnerships?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Well, I'm. I mean, I think we have we have the capability to do that. That's a white label service that's that's that's done by our Consumer health division. They've been working on that. They're also building out platforms so that they can have ecommerce for devices that we sell, such as the you know, the Dexcom glucose monitor, right. And you have to have a prescription for that. So I think, I mean the the demand is there and we have the capability to do it. It's part of the, it's part of our strategy that if you think about there's three pillars to our strategy.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Wellness at home, aging at home and care at home.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>Yeah, alright.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>Umm, so I'm trying to think what sort of unusual challenges you've encountered in the rollout of this of of Best Buy health for example. For instance, have you encountered any challenges with with with cultural resistance to driving adoption? Have you found any false alarms with the pendants that detect fall, have present fall detection? What sort of challenges do we have in driving adoption?</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>Uh, and use of of these services.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Well, I think one of the biggest challenges is just setting the program up within the within the the hospital space of the IDN because they're not, they don't have it, right. It's not, it's not a plug and play. So you've got the challenges to, you know, getting the devices, how many devices are there? We've gotta have all those devices connecting into our platform. So if you think about it, you have, you have your, you know, your base station, we have the tablet with the with the consumer puts, the either puts the information in manually or it's connected through a wireless device.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>But we've gotta have that, that type of device that's be can be connected to the platform. So that's the challenge and then and and then on the backside is is, you know scaling it within the hospital and having them have the program and that they're ready for the program because a lot of logistics behind the scenes, right, you've gotta connect into their, their device their you know patient records. So there there is it's a lot of work and you know that's why we're we're trying to figure out how do we help how do we help.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Our customers, not the not the consumer, not the patient itself, but how do we help our IDN get get in and go beyond patient one, right patient ones the easiest, but then you have to scale. So I think to me that's a probably a bigger challenge than it is. Sorry, my phone is going crazy. That's the bigger challenge and probably is it with adoption because I think adoption will come quickly.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Once you, once people see more of it and and hear about it more and and and then talking about it now and one of our early hospital home patients was he was an elderly gentleman and he's an advocate UMass medical where UMass medical just one like the best care hospital at home program and they would leveraging our products from our recent acquisition of current health but his his son was a physician so you know you think about it right you you you don't know but then you you know you call your sons of physician and.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>You know, he tells her dad. It's gonna be good. This is a good thing. Keeps you at home, right? With mom, with your pets, with your food. So I think that's like, that's like it's gonna get it. Get a snow, it'll get a snowball effect. Right. But it's just gotta get more and more. And that's, you know, really why I came to Best Buy health too, because my dad was dying of congestive heart disease. And his last four months of his life were terrible in and out of the hospital during COVID, my mom couldn't see him.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>We couldn't manage his medication. We didn't. You know, the visiting nurses when he was in Hospice came two days a week. That's not enough, right? His doctor was never connected to him the whole time. I was like, oh, my gosh. Technology could have helped him live a better life. And it would have been a lot less stress on my mom, the primary caregiver.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>So we're approaching the end of this podcast episode and and by the way, I'd like to thank you, Gene, for sharing that story. That personal story of your father.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>Our listeners are are largely CIO, CTO.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>Knows a large healthcare delivery systems.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>Umm, I'd like you to speak to our listeners about why, CIO, why they should consider partnering with Best Buy Health, what material benefits will they realize they're you've already mentioned, there's going to partner. That would require a material investment in logistics and connecting to patient records with the patient profile. Why should if you were to speak to CIO's at large healthcare delivery systems, why should they consider partnering with Best Buy Health?</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>He said we have the capabilities and we have the systems in place that we can enable higher quality of care for their patients and also help our our their doctors and their nurses really provide a better care to their patients as well.</v>

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<v Jordan Cooper>Alright. Well thank you very much for joining us. This has been Gen Olives, chief technology officer at Best Buy Health. So thank you Gene for joining us today.</v>

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<v Olive, Jeanmarie>Thank you. Have a nice weekend. Bye bye.</v>

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