Industry Update - March 12

Elemy reaches unicorn status boosted by $219M investment

Company:

• Online + in-home behavioral health therapy for children
• provides care services for children with autism and other behavioral health conditions by pairing best-in-class clinicians with better technology.
• launched a little more than a year ago 
• Formerly named Sprout Therapy
• Valued at $1.15 billion

Problem Space:

• Just in the U.S. alone, Elemy estimate there are 1.8 million families with children with autism 
• beyond that, one in five children have some sort of pediatric behavioral health need, according to the CDC as per Yakubchyk's interview. 

The technology: 

• Elemy offers a tech-enabled platform for personalized care. 
• Elemy’s clinicians create customized treatment plans that can be administered both online and in-home, where children are more comfortable and have fewer distractions. 
• Data collected are used to measure efficacy and inform the evolution of both individual treatment plans and broader clinical strategies.

Value generated:

• By simplifying the onboarding process and more quickly pairing expert clinicians with patients, Elemy’s platform can reduce the patient onboarding process to as little as 12 weeks from an industry average of six months to two years
• On demand virtual or at-home care

Future Plans:

• plans to use the fresh capital to invest in significantly growing its staff 
• to expand its national reach. 
• the company will also invest in R&D to further enhance its technology offerings
• to expand into new areas of behavioral care

Who pays? 

• It looks like the patients pay in this case
• The provider gets paid for their time, and Elemy keeps some commission 

Competitors:

It seems the competition is really heating up in the space of online/at-home/in-clinic behavioral therapy for children or teens.

• Pediatric teletherapy provider DotCom Therapy recently secured $13 million. DotCom Therapy provides speech, behavioral, mental health and occupational therapy to children through its online, face-to-face platform, Zesh.
• Hazel Health operates virtual care clinics inside the school nurse's office to connect students to a physician via telehealth and last year landed a $33 million funding round in September 2020.
• Daybreak Health is another startup trying to tackle the gaps in mental health care for kids. The company launched in February 2020 and specializes in providing online counseling services, especially for teens.
• Brightline recently scored $72 million to fuel the national expansion of its virtual behavioral health solution designed specifically to support children, teenagers, and their families. 
• On-demand mental health care startup Ginger also unveiled a new offering designed for users age 13 to 17. Called Ginger for Teens, the service resembles the startup’s primary platform with the inclusion of digital self-care materials, behavioral health coaching, therapy and psychiatry accessible through a smartphone app.

Analysis: 

• CDC has compiled some numbers and this indeed seems to be a big issue. It is a welcome change to see the underserved population of kids and teens getting the attention they deserve and care coming to them in virtual or at-home or in-school setting. 
• In order to make the commercial model sustainable the specific programs and interventions needs to be backed by peer-reviewed research based on large enough sample sizes. Or eventually people might have trust issues with the specific solutions offered by the companies (not the behavioral therapy itself).
• The certified behavioral analysts have more incentive to be part of Elemy network, where they not only get competitive pay and flexible work hours, but other perks associated with a Unicorn (paid customer cancellation, BCBA tuition reimbursements etc).
• Elemy doesn't seem to have have their own self-created interventions (which might change with the new round of funding), they just offer a platform where board certified behavioral analysts can connect with kids (and their families) who need the services. Basically they act as intermediary trying to generate value for both sides using technology, and providing flexibility.