Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Chris Sullens, CEO of CentralReach (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: All of that you have talked about subsequent to the first EMR discussion is much broader than EMR. You are doing more of a vertical type of service within the EMR autism space. 

Chris Sullens: Yes, exactly. The way we think about it is, if you look at the lifespan of an individual, our platform is designed around providing support to those that provide services predominantly to school-age individuals who are on the spectrum but can also be used for adult services as well.

What we liked about avail^® platform was that it allowed us to provide solutions to the same market, the same universe, and community, but to extend what we are doing beyond school into the adult age market group. This group is underserved because there isn’t a lot of funding historically to help.

A lot of the funding is geared around school-age children. Once they get to the age of 22 and they get out of school, there isn’t a lot of support. However, there is still a need for support, tools, and things that can help them do what you and I want to do which is to live independently and live successfully.

That was the impetus around us making this acquisition, to be able to enhance and extend our platform to serve the entire autistic community. That’s why we say any age and anywhere in the world, our platform is going to be able to address the needs of those communities.

Sramana Mitra: What business models are you able to apply to the adult population?

Chris Sullens: It’s still a subscription-based product. The buyer is different. The buyer will typically be a government entity that is providing support in services to enable a lot of those populations to gain employment, support employers, and help to increase the opportunity for them. These include job coaching and vocational services.

That is one entity that would purchase the services. There are several companies, those who are forward-thinking, who want to increase diversity in the workplace but need tools to be able to do that. We feel that can and will be an opportunity for us to sell into those entities directly.

Those are the two. There are also the school systems and school districts that are looking to enable and give more leverage to the staff that they have. 

Sramana Mitra: These are assumptions and you haven’t really validated that these buyers are willing to pay?

Chris Sullens: No, we have validated. In terms of the government entities in schools, we have several customers. The use case that I talked about with TJ Maxx was real. We have a video about the individual who was profiled and the use case around that.

The business has momentum. It gained as a lot of the digital content and tools did. It gained momentum because of COVID. As we look at going forward, we see that this is not a COVID-driven thing. It just accelerated people’s openness to using a solution like this.

We think that is something that is going to continue to expand. The company while small had a decent ARR and the pipeline is strong. There are real buyers and real opportunities. 

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Chris Sullens, CEO of CentralReach
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