Wheel Head of Product Michelle Monaco

Telehealth

Wheel Reveals How Patients Actually Engage With Virtual Care

Wheel just published its third annual Virtual Care Horizons report, and it was overflowing with great data on where telehealth is scaling – and which models are built to last.

Virtual care is all grown up. Adoption has stabilized, competition has intensified, and success is no longer driven by first visits. It’s driven by continuity.

• That means that scale alone is no longer the headline. Data from 1.4M visits on Wheel’s Horizon telehealth platform shows that sustained engagement is the new unit of growth.

New year, new trends. Wheel answered a trio of important questions using real behavioral data from its users rather than the usual survey approach.

• How do patients actually move from entry points to ongoing care?
• Where do they stack services?
• Which models support durable engagement over time?

Women’s health is the new growth engine. In 2025, women’s health became the largest service category on the platform, accounting for about 50% of all visits.

• One in three new customer launches or expansions focused on this vertical, which seems like a strong signal that this is a long-term category strength rather than a one-off volume spike.

• Women’s health offers a uniquely durable foundation for virtual care. It creates demand for a wide range of high-frequency touchpoints early in life (sexual and reproductive health), then naturally extends into more complex, longitudinal needs (menopause support).

Weight management is the clinical anchor. It’s the connective tissue between hormonal, metabolic, and chronic care, effectively converting single-point entry into integrated care models.

• Patients entering through this vertical are more likely to stack services ranging from follow-up care to diagnostics. As GLP-1s went mainstream last year, Wheel saw a 263% surge in demand for downstream chronic condition and preventive care visits.

Virtual care is the operating layer. It’s evolved from an access channel to the infrastructure for multi-condition management, and the retention metrics look a lot different than the days of transactional telehealth.

• 69% of Wheel-powered visits were created by returning patients in 2025. 
• 70% of patients engaged in chronic and preventive care programs return for 2+ visits.
• 58% of women’s health patients return for a second visit or beyond.

The Takeaway

Most vendor reports read like a billboard for their services, but Wheel just gave us one of the best recent snapshots of how patients are actually engaging with virtual care.

Episode-Based Care: Making TEAM Work

The TEAM model represents one of the largest mandatory reforms in Medicare history, and forward-thinking perioperative leaders are leaning into it. Join C8 Health for a fireside chat exploring how episode-based care is reshaping quality improvement – and why the orgs succeeding under TEAM are treating it as a catalyst for transformation, not just a regulatory checkbox. Grab your spot here.

Scale RPM With BPM Pro 2

BPM Pro 2 is the next generation of cellular blood pressure monitors, empowering care teams to scale remote patient monitoring and streamline operations. Discover why leading providers are choosing BPM Pro 2 to collect highly precise measurements and enrich data with Patient Insights from their daily lives.

The Wire

• Included Expands to Employers: Included Health debuted an alternative plan design that uses PCPs to quarterback care for members while helping employers manage costs. The new design is perfectly centered around primary care, starting with a comprehensive consult and coordinated plan across virtual and in-person settings. Included backs that up with its signature navigation support and AI-powered engagement to help guide members to high-quality, cost effective care – pretty much exactly what employers have been struggling to find with legacy options.

• Spring Acquires Alma: Spring Health acquired fellow mental health startup Alma to “extend the reach of its advanced AI-enabled capabilities.” The Alma platform supports independent therapists in running their practices and taking insurance, with an online portal that helps patients find providers covered by their plan. Alma’s payor relationships and provider infrastructure should also pair nicely with Spring’s leading mental health platform, which supports more than 50M lives through employers and health plan benefits.

• Virtual Patients Get Different Treatment: A Stanford study revealed that remotely-managed heart failure patients receive less diagnostic testing and saw serious dips in guideline-directed medical therapy. The analysis tracked 44 cardiologists who treated 7.7k HF patients, finding that patients whose clinicians favored telemedicine underwent fewer diagnostic tests the more virtual visits they attended, including significant drops in ECGs (-70%) and echocardiograms (-30%). Diagnostics weren’t the only thing that dropped, with total GDMT initiation down 20% and new medication orders also decreasing across multiple drug classes. Cardiac Wire has you covered with all the other juicy details. 

• Hume AI + DeepMind: Hume AI struck a licensing agreement with Google DeepMind to advance its ML models that capture subtle meaning from speech and nonverbal expressions for use in areas like clinical research or screenings. Hume was the first portfolio company launched by Aegis Ventures in 2021, and is already on track to generate over $100M in revenue this year from research partnerships with frontier labs and AI-first enterprises. Google couldn’t resist stealing Hume’s chief executive in the process, so former Appen CRO Andrew Ettinger signed on to take his place as CEO.

• Apple’s on FHIR: Apple just quietly updated its Health app to support the FHIR R4 interoperability standard. More specifically, the iPhone’s “Health Records” and “Share with Provider” endpoints are now compatible, enabling app data to flow into clinical systems using the same standard as major EHRs. That’s great news for pretty much everybody. It means RPM programs will be less of a headache to deploy, patient portals will be able to access continuous data instead of just episodic uploads, and there’s one less massive wall between consumer health data and clinical records. Shoutout to Femovate Founder Theresa Neil for the scoop.

• Health Gorilla Fights Back: Health Gorilla returned blows in its fight against Epic, saying the lawsuit filed by the EHR vendor includes baseless allegations and that it’s prepared to vigorously defend itself. The suit claims that Health Gorilla has been illegally allowing customers to access patient records through the Treatment loophole, and that many of those orgs are even using sham websites and fake visit data to give the impression they’re delivering care. Health Gorilla called the allegations “unfounded and wholly misleading,” then pointed out that Epic’s use of litigation is “irresponsible” due to the broader implications as the industry transitions to a TEFCA-enabled ecosystem.

• Apple Watch Beats Standard AFib Detection: New research in JACC suggests that the Apple Watch might be even better than the current standard of care for detecting atrial fibrillation. The study randomized 437 senior patients with elevated stroke risk to either wear an Apple Watch (12+ hours per day) or receive standard care for six months. New-onset AFib was diagnosed in 9.6% of patients in the Apple Watch group (57% of whom were asymptomatic), versus just 2.3% in the control (all of whom experienced symptoms).

• BrightInsight Raises $13M: BrightInsight hauled in $13M of growth funding to accelerate the development of its AI medication persistence and adherence solutions. Topping off its coffers will help BrightInsight “enable rapid scalability of high-impact programs” across a broad range of diseases and therapies globally, such as the Patient App from its collaboration with Sanofi and Regeneron – a smartphone app that was built from the ground up to support patients on biologic therapies.

• Heart Societies Embrace Tech: While we’re on the topic, a joint scientific statement from the HFSA and the AAHFN suggests that integrated health technologies in heart failure care like telemonitoring, RPM, and implantable devices can improve quality of life and reduce hospitalizations for HF patients. The statement also flags major real-world hurdles like uneven patient engagement, digital access, and high start-up costs. Heart societies clearly seem to think the benefits of virtual care outweigh the cons brought up in the Stanford study.

Making the Case for AI

Healthcare organizations have a lot to gain from implementing AI that can enhance coding accuracy and quality metrics, but securing buy-in from leadership is a crucial first step. Check out Navina’s new guide by Dr. Michael S. Barr to see exactly how to demonstrate clear financial benefits, ROI potential, and alignment with organizational priorities to help ensure AI projects are successful.

10 Bold Predictions for Healthcare AI in 2026

If 2024 was the year of proof-of-concept and 2025 was the year of early adoption and scale, 2026 is shaping up to be something different. This year, AI will become expected infrastructure and simply part of how healthcare gets done. Read these 10 predictions from clinical leaders, health system executives, and researchers shaping the next phase of the field on how the AI conversation will change in 2026.

The Resource Wire

• Next Generation Ambient Technology and Agents: The ambient AI transformation is already sweeping across health systems, reducing administrative burdens and improving patient outcomes. So, what’s next? Tune into this on-demand session to learn how systems like Carle Health and Denver Health are leveraging Nabla to eliminate Pajama Time and build a future where agentic AI unlocks true workforce sustainability.

• Enrollment Timelines, State by State: Provider enrollment delays are shaping access to care, revenue timelines, and even workforce strategy. Ever wonder how they’re impacting organizations near you? Check out Medallion’s 2025 Geography of Payor Enrollments to see state-by-state enrollment times, how delays are compounding workforce shortages, and why you should factor this into your 2026 planning.

• Ambient ROI – New Metrics From Health Systems: While Abridge’s value is clear from its rapid adoption and positive clinician feedback, discerning CMIOs, CIOs, and CFOs also require longitudinal and more precise impact measurement, including of operational and workflow processes. With a new ROI methodology, that’s what Abridge delivers for its partners. See how four health systems are using this new tool to measure ROI at a deeper level than ever before. Download here. 

• Supporting Sustainable GLP-1 Weight Loss With Withings: Leading digital health companies and health systems are supporting safe and sustainable GLP-1 weight loss with Withings Health Solutions. See how care teams are using Withings’ suite of remote patient monitoring solutions to prevent muscle loss, combat plateaus, and drive better outcomes for their patients.

The Industry Wire

1. Confusion reigns over last-minute move to avoid government shutdown. 
2. U.S. life expectancy rebounds to hit all-time high.
3. How are hospital executives getting ready for 2026?
4. The most important healthcare trends to watch in 2026.
5. Health systems call for better oversight of patient data-sharing.
6. CMS working on smoother rollout of Medicaid work requirements.
7. CMS officials defend decision not to raise MA rates.
8. HCA warns of $1B revenue drop due to ACA subsidy lapse.
9. FDA updates rules on medical device inspections.
10. Federal research funding cuts impact first-year PhD students.