The news: Best Buy-owned remote patient monitoring (RPM) company Current Health is teaming up with Zoom to add telehealth capabilities to its at-home care platform.

• Current Health doesn’t offer any telehealth features currently.

More on Current Health: Current’s platform is compatible with electronic health records (EHRs), and it partners with telehealth providers, health systems and home health agencies.

• It collects health data like respiration rate, oxygen saturation, heart rate, and body temperature and uses AI to predict disease progression, helping providers deliver more tailored and effective care.

The company saw major growth during the pandemic: RPM use was already on an upward trajectory, but the pandemic accelerated that.

• Our forecast found that around 30 million people used RPM tech at least once per month in 2020—and that’s expected to more than double to 70.6 million by 2025.
• Current rode the pandemic-induced RPM wave: Its revenues jumped 3,000% year-over-year in 2020, and its health system customer roster grew 400%.
• Current Health clients include big names like Mount Sinai, Geisinger Health, and the UK’s National Health Service.

Why Zoom? It’s HIPAA-compliant, can integrate easily with EHR systems, and is a leading telehealth option for providers.

• 34% of US physicians and healthcare practitioners said they were using Zoom to access telehealth, per The COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition.

What this means for Best Buy: Best Buy’s Current Health acquisition (completed in October 2021) is going to help it bolster its RPM solutions and score more health system partners.

• Prior to tapping Zoom, Best Buy and Current Health did not offer any video-conferencing options for virtual care.
• Zoom’s telehealth power can help Best Buy create more connected and comprehensive home healthcare solutions—an area it’s trying to gain a bigger share of.

The bigger picture: This partnership underscores how RPM and telehealth are becoming more intertwined in healthcare.

• RPM data can add more value to telehealth visits and help make the quality and accuracy of virtual care as close to in-person care as possible.

Dig deeper: Check out our US Remote Patient monitoring forecast here or our Remote Patient Monitoring report here to learn more about the future of RPM.