Ochsner Health System is expanding its tech-savvy retail shop, O Bar, to the Capital Region, announcing today plans to open the first Baton Rouge location on the ground floor of its O’Neal Lane medical center in early May.
O Bar is a health conscious store that carries a variety of Apple and Android technology as well as digital water bottles, trackers and scales, and blood pressure cups, among other items. O Bar also features an iPad bar modeled after Apple’s Genius Bar.
An on-site tech specialist assists customers with finding health and wellness apps that correspond to their health care needs, answers questions about interactive health care technology and even helps set up devices like Fitbit.
Ochsner says it does not receive a cut of the profits from third-party apps purchased by O Bar customers. And the retail shop isn’t limited to the hospital’s patients, a spokesman says. Anyone can go to O Bar regardless of their primary care physician.
“If you’re interested in being healthier you can come to the O Bar and get help,” an Ochsner spokesman says. “We’re just trying to help guide people toward the resources that makes them the healthiest they can be.”
Ochsner has four O Bar locations in the New Orleans area and plans to open a second Baton Rouge location at the health system’s $100 million clinic and microhospital currently under construction at The Grove mixed-use development near the Mall of Louisiana. Ochsner also will add a mobile O Bar that will travel across its Louisiana markets.
O Bar is set to open on O’Neal Lane on May 2.
