Jean Olive
Chief Technology Officer for Best Buy Health
There are two truths in modern healthcare: patients want to recover at home and healthcare professionals need a way to easier utilize the technology available to provide care at home and improve patient outcomes. That is where Best Buy Health comes in.
Best Buy Health enables care at home for everyone, and to do this, focuses on three strategic areas: wellness at home, ageing at home and care at home.
Best Buy Health built its strategy on the strengths of the Best Buy brand including its holistic retail channels that offer the health technology customers need, its expansive distribution channels which help get customers technology quickly and their ability to help customers with their tech products right inside their homes through Geek Squad. No one has the combination of these abilities at scale like Best Buy does.
“Technology is at the centre of everything Best Buy Health does and more than ever, the role of technology in healthcare is becoming a crucial component of delivering care to patients and improving their experiences and outcomes,” explains Jean Olive, chief technology officer at Best Buy Health.
Olive is responsible for all information and technology systems, product research, design and development for Best Buy Health.
“Technology is already in our homes and we know that healthcare is coming into our homes but requires complex technology to make it successful—that’s why we focus on what we do best. We’re not looking to actually provide the care for patients, we’re enabling the care by building an ecosystem that supports the entire care at home process.”
Throughout her career, Olive has worked for companies where she personally connected with their purpose. She previously worked in aerospace and defence and then Philips Healthcare. In 2021, she jumped at the opportunity to get back into healthcare after experiencing the need for transformative technology.
“My dad had congestive heart failure and the last four months of his life were extremely difficult,” Olive explains. “It was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and he ended up in the hospital for monitoring three times and was unable to have anyone visit him. The whole time I was thinking that his quality of life would have been better if he could have been monitored at home – and life would have been less stressful for my Mom and our family caring for him if they were able to do so at home.
The day of his funeral, Olive got a message from Deborah Di Sanzo, President of Best Buy Health.
“I knew it was time for me to get back into health and focus on delivering technologies solutions in the home to improve patients’ and caregivers’ lives as well as the quality of care for patients,” Olive says.
One year and seven months into this role, Olive was recognised as a leader in wellness at home.
“It's wonderful that we're really getting recognition,” she says. “Nobody wants to be in the hospital, but when people are at home, we know that they eat better, they sleep better, they move more, and they're with their family and pets!”
“We do know however, that in some circumstances where patients are receiving care at home, they can experience loneliness. That’s why we work so hard to provide care with our suite of products and services through the Lively brand as well as our Caring Centres, staffed by real people who can help with a variety of health-related needs including everything from medical emergencies, scheduling appointments or just providing comfort to those who need it.”
Read the full story HERE.
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