Connected Care's Inflection Point: Why the Next Five Years Will Reshape Healthcare

For years, "connected care" was a slide in a deck. It was a vision pitched to investors, payers, and health systems that promised continuous data, fewer admissions, and better outcomes. The technology worked. The clinical evidence accumulated. The reimbursement codes existed. And yet adoption stayed concentrated in pilot programs and academic medical centers.

That changed in 2025.

From pilot to platform

What we are seeing across our portfolio and the broader market is a structural shift, not a cyclical one. Three forces are converging at the same time, and each reinforces the others:

Reimbursement caught up to the technology. CMS expanded RPM and RTM coverage in ways that made unit economics work for both providers and platforms. Commercial payers are following, sometimes reluctantly and sometimes eagerly, because the alternative is paying for the avoidable hospitalizations these programs prevent.

Health systems stopped treating connected care as innovation theater. Margin pressure is real. The systems that survived the post-COVID financial reset are the ones treating remote monitoring, hospital-at-home, and virtual-first programs as core operations rather than pilot projects. They are signing multi-year contracts. They are hiring against these programs.

The clinical workforce wants this. Burnout, staffing shortages, and the rise of nurse-led care models have pushed providers to embrace tools that extend their reach. The cultural resistance that slowed adoption a decade ago has largely dissolved among clinicians under 45.

Where the category is heading

The next five years will not be defined by another wave of single-condition point solutions. We are watching three shifts play out in real time:

Consolidation around platforms. Health systems are tired of integrating ten different vendors for ten different patient cohorts. The winners will be platforms that can credibly serve multiple condition lines (cardiac, diabetes, oncology, behavioral health) with one contract, one integration, and one clinical workflow.

The shift from monitoring to intervention. Collecting biometric data is now table stakes. The companies that will define the next chapter are the ones using that data to drive specific clinical actions (medication titration, behavioral coaching, escalation triggers) and proving outcomes against benchmarks payers will pay for.

Risk-bearing models. The most ambitious operators are moving past fee-for-service RPM into capitated and at-risk arrangements. This is where the math gets interesting and where new categories (virtual specialty practices, full-risk chronic care entities) are being built. It also separates companies with real clinical conviction from those running a software business in a clinical wrapper.

What this means for founders

If you are building in connected care today, the bar has moved. Investors and buyers have seen enough pilots and feature releases. What they want, and what we are looking for when we write checks, is evidence that you understand the operational reality of delivering care at scale, not just the technology of capturing data.

That means clinical leadership in the building. It means a go-to-market motion that respects how health systems actually buy. It means owning enough of the patient relationship that you can prove outcomes, not just engagement. And it means a financial model that survives the move from pilot pricing to platform pricing.

This is the environment we built The Wheeler Group for. The companies we advise and invest in are the ones treating this moment with the seriousness it deserves: building for a category that is finally ready to scale, and for the patients and clinicians who have been waiting for it to.

More to come in this journal: client stories, sector breakdowns, and the questions we are wrestling with alongside the founders we work with. If any of this resonates, we would love to hear from you.

— Andrew