Best Buy Health expands into prescription diabetes medical tech sale and delivery

In its first move to sell medical devices that require a prescription, Best Buy will soon offer glucose-monitoring machines for delivery to customers' homes.

On Monday, the Richfield retailer announced it would sell the Dexcom G7 Continuous Glucose Monitoring System, used to manage diabetes, to eligible patients through a new online platform at Wellness.BestBuyHealth.com. More than 10% of the U.S. population has diabetes, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the glucose monitor distributions, Best Buy has partnered with clinicians at virtual care platform Wheel. They will determine patients' eligibility while pharmacy technology provider HealthDyne will process prescriptions and send the devices. Instead of having to go through multiple health care providers to obtain the monitoring system, Best Buy's new wellness website will be a one-stop shop.

"Our customers come to Best Buy for our wide selection of the latest and most innovative tech, including our large selection of health and wellness products," said Frank Bedo, senior vice president of e-commerce at Best Buy, in a statement. "Offering continuous glucose monitoring systems is another great example of how we offer a simple experience for customers to get the devices they need to better manage their health."

Customers are expected to be able to start making orders by the end of November. Eventually, customers with existing prescriptions will be able to upload those prescriptions to Best Buy's wellness site to have devices sent to them.

Continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs, provide real-time updates of users' blood sugar using a small sensor placed under the skin that sends readings to a smart device. The technology has "transformed the diabetes management landscape," said Carissa Kemp, director of state government affairs of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), in an email to the Star Tribune.

"The ADA supports greater access and broadening channels for access for many people with diabetes when continuous glucose monitoring technology is appropriate," Kemp said.

The continuous glucose monitoring market was valued at $7.2 billion globally in 2022 with its revenue expected to grow rapidly to $54.7 billion by 2032, according to consulting firm Polaris Market Research.

Best Buy has continued to expand its health division recently with products as well as services, part of its growth strategy to become a leading medical technology provider.

Last month, following positive pilot results, Best Buy announced it would expand an at-home health care program partnership with Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health System in which its Geek Squad tech experts help set up devices like blood pressure cuffs and pulse oximeters for at-home patients. Last year, Best Buy started selling over-the-counter hearing aids, and its product assortment has grown to also include skincare tech products and wearable health-monitoring devices. In 2021, Best Buy acquired patient-monitoring platform Current Health. Four years earlier, the retailer purchased GreatCall (currently using the name Lively), a cellphone and medical-alert service provider for seniors.