Best Buy sees growth in healthcare technology for seniors

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NEW YORK (AP) – The country's largest consumer electronics company, known for selling televisions, mobile phones and laptops, sees health care as a major source of future growth.

Best Buy Co. said on Wednesday that it hopes to provide five-year-olds with 5 million senior health monitoring services, ranging from sensors placed throughout the home to a pendant worn around the neck. It currently provides the service at 1 million.

It is part of the chain's deeper push into the US $ 3.5 trillion healthcare market, and is key to achieving its $ 50 billion annual revenue goal. horizon 2025.

The Minneapolis-based chain relies on an aging US population, noting that two in three seniors suffer from two or more chronic conditions and many want to stay at home.

Best Buy is also looking to deepen its work on health care at a time when, like other retailers, uncertainty surrounds the escalating trade war with China. Some of its core businesses, such as the sale of televisions and telephones, have been sluggish, although the consumer electronics sector is stable.

This strategy comes as Best Buy has managed to cope with growing competition from Amazon and other players by speeding up shipments and adding more services to deepen customer relationships.

"It's an environment of constant innovation and people in need of technological help," Chief Executive Officer Corie Barry said at an investor conference on Wednesday.

Best Buy has embarked on a buying spree to boost the health sector.

In May, he acquired Critical Signal Technologies, a provider of personal emergency response systems and telehealth surveillance services for seniors at home. In August, she acquired BioSensics' business in the area of predictive healthcare technologies, including the hiring of the company's science and engineering team. Last year he bought GreatCall, which provides emergency response devices for the elderly.

She has also hired her own chief physician to advance these efforts: Daniel Grossman, MD, will report to Asheesh Saksena, head of Best Buy Health.

Insurers are paying more for remote surveillance technology that tracks issues such as chronic disease and keeps patients healthy and out of hospitals. This technology may include special wireless scales to monitor patients with congestive heart failure.

Saksena told investors that pendants using certain algorithms can track the behavior of an elderly person and predict the risk of falling. He also noted that the sensors on the refrigerators detect the frequency of use. This can trigger a call from the GreatCall agent to find out if this person has eaten.