Guide: Build or Buy? The Smart Way to Scale Virtual Care
How leading companies are rethinking infrastructure to accelerate growth and deliver care
In a market where speed, scalability, and continuity define success, the question isn’t can you build your own virtual care infrastructure—it’s should you?
Launching a program is easy. Scaling a profitable, multi-condition platform that keeps patients engaged over time is the real challenge. Every new condition, geography, or feature adds complexity and cost pressure.
This guide helps you evaluate the tradeoffs between building in-house and partnering for scale so you can move faster, operate leaner, and grow sustainably.
What’s inside the build or buy guide
See how leading brands are scaling smarter with insights on:
The challenge of scaling virtual care operations
Virtual care is no longer an experiment. It’s now a core expectation of modern healthcare. The market has shifted from rapid expansion to operational efficiency, and healthcare leaders are asking a new question: how do you expand access and innovation without collapsing under the weight of your own infrastructure?
Even the most promising care innovations can get bogged down in operational complexity if the underlying infrastructure can’t scale with them.
The economics of building virtual care infrastructure in-house
Building your own infrastructure may seem like control, but it often leads to rising costs, slower launches, and mounting operational debt. What starts as a quick build can quickly turn into a multi-year effort that drains capital and focus from patient experience and growth.
The risk of vendor fragmentation in multi-condition care
Many healthcare organizations try to scale by layering multiple vendors—one for labs, another for pharmacy, another for weight management. But that approach slows everything down.
Data becomes siloed. Care feels transactional. Patients lose trust when experiences differ between programs. Without unified infrastructure, you can’t measure outcomes, personalize engagement, or deliver continuity.
"Build what makes you different. Buy what makes you scalable."
The smarter way to scale virtual care
Build what makes you different. Buy what makes you scalable.
Wheel’s virtual care infrastructure combines technology, clinician operations, and compliance into one scalable foundation so healthcare brands can launch new programs in weeks, not years.
Leading healthcare innovators are already scaling faster and more efficiently with Wheel. They are reducing costs, accelerating speed to market, and expanding from single-condition care to comprehensive, multi-condition programs on a unified platform.
Scalable infrastructure is not a shortcut. It is the foundation for sustainable growth in modern healthcare.