ROCHESTER, Minn. - The Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation (CFI) announced today that Best Buy® is the founding consortium member of a new "living lab" in the Charter House, a continuing care retirement community in Rochester. John Noseworthy, M.D., President and CEO of Mayo Clinic, made the announcement at the Transform 2011 symposium today.
The Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation is collaborating with Mayo Clinic's Robert and Arlene Kogod Center for Aging and the Charter House in creating the Healthy Aging & Independent Living (HAIL) Lab to support 'aging in place' - helping seniors remain at home, healthy and independent. The HAIL Lab will be a place for focus groups, as well as for designing, prototyping and piloting new services and technologies with voluntary participation from Charter House residents and other community agencies.
"The goal of the HAIL Lab is to understand the needs of seniors and develop products and services that will help them live longer, more independent lives," says Nicholas LaRusso, M.D., medical director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation.
The HAIL Lab will be supported by a consortium of organizations that provide strategy, expertise and financial support. Best Buy has been exploring the growing potential for wireless-enabled health-related devices, and its participation in the consortium is a natural extension of other investments the company has made in the health and wellness technologies arena. "We're delighted to be part of the HAIL Lab consortium," says Kurt Hulander, senior director of health platforms at Best Buy. "We believe technology has the potential to foster healthy, productive lives by enabling easier access to information and medical care. Our partnership with Mayo Clinic will help us better understand the full potential for health technologies with patients who need them most."
Best Buy is already expanding its portfolio of health-related retail offerings with blood pressure monitors, pedometers, fitness watches and other connected devices. The potential for these tools to wirelessly transmit data would enable patients to share information with medical professionals.
"We share a vision with Best Buy to support this growing segment of our population, helping seniors remain at home, in a connected and safe manner," says Barbara Spurrier, administrative director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation. "We intend to pilot new services, care models and technologies around such themes as connection and engagement, health and wellness, and home safety."
About the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation
Established in 2008, the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation (CFI) is pioneering what can only be called a Mayo Clinic style of health care innovations. The center is staffed with design professionals, many of whom are top design school graduates, as well as project managers and specialists from a wide variety of disciplines whose aim is to help innovative thinkers throughout the institution bring their ideas to life and team with colleagues to keep the institution moving forward - testing new concepts and bringing them quickly into the practice. Team members are recruited who have expertise in health care, information technology, anthropology, communication, human factors engineering, education, and other disciplines as needed on given projects.
About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit worldwide leader in medical care, research and education for people from all walks of life. For more information, visit www.mayoclinic.com and www.mayoclinic.org/news.
VIDEO ALERT: The symposium and announcement will be available to view live the days of the meeting. The video from the announcement will be available on the Mayo Clinic newsblog.