Healthcare companies are racing to build the perfect consumer health experience. They’re collecting data from wearables, creating AI-powered insights, and building sleek apps. But there’s a problem: having health data and insights doesn’t automatically translate into actual medical care.
Wheel and b.well Connected Health announced a partnership on May 18 that tries to solve this disconnect. The collaboration connects b.well’s consumer health data platform with Wheel’s virtual care infrastructure, creating what the companies call “the industry’s first complete path” from health data to care delivery.
Why this partnership matters now
The timing reflects major shifts happening across healthcare. Retailers like Walmart are becoming care access points. Pharmaceutical companies are going directly to patients. Medicare is pushing for more digital workflows and better interoperability.
“Everyone is racing to own healthcare’s front door, but most of them are going to hit the same wall,” said Michelle Davey, CEO of Wheel. “A record isn’t care. An AI answer isn’t care. A marketplace is not care.”
The challenge is real. Most health tech companies excel at collecting data or providing insights, but struggle with the clinical delivery piece. Similarly, many healthcare providers have strong clinical capabilities but lack the consumer-facing technology infrastructure.
How the integrated platform works
The partnership combines b.well’s consumer health data capabilities with Wheel’s Horizon platform for virtual care. Here’s what the integrated system is designed to support:
- Consumer-authorized access to health records
- AI-enabled guidance and care routing
- Smarter intake processes with more clinical context
- Virtual care visits, prescribing, and pharmacy coordination
- Outcome measurement and follow-up engagement
The goal is to eliminate the fragmented experience where patients might log into multiple portals, visit different clinicians, and navigate pharmacy support separately – often without any system talking to the others.
Initial rollout through Walmart partnership
The combined offering will first be available through Wheel Clinic, which operates on Walmart’s Better Care Services platform. This gives the partnership immediate access to a large consumer base and retail infrastructure.
Wheel Clinic currently supports virtual care programs across several areas including cardiometabolic health, GLP-1 diabetes medications, women’s health, primary care, and urgent care. The company is also working on Medicare Bridge models.
“Consumers should not have to navigate healthcare by guessing which portal to log into, which clinician to see, whether a pharmacy can support them, or what should happen next,” said Kristen Valdes, founder and CEO of b.well Connected Health.
Technical approach and broader implications
The partnership uses a modular, standards-based approach built on FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) protocols. This means other healthcare organizations could potentially integrate pieces of the platform rather than building everything from scratch.
b.well handles the data infrastructure side – health record access, patient matching, AI insights, and APIs. Wheel manages clinical delivery – the virtual care network, prescribing workflows, pharmacy coordination, and program operations.
The collaboration represents a broader trend where healthcare technology companies are partnering rather than trying to build complete solutions independently. As AI becomes more central to health experiences and regulatory pressure increases for better interoperability, these types of partnerships may become more common across the industry.