A behavioral therapy startup founded by a clinical psychologist with two decades of experience working with neurodivergent youth. She had developed a therapeutic methodology for building social-emotional skills — structured, evidence-based, designed for learners with autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, and intellectual disabilities. The methodology worked in person. She needed it to work digitally — as an interactive platform that therapists, parents, and special educators could use with their learners.
She had tried two previous development shops. The first built a prototype that looked good in demo but couldn't handle concurrent users and had no HIPAA architecture — learner data was stored unencrypted. The second shop quoted 12 months and a budget that would consume her entire seed funding. She had invested $150K and 18 months across both attempts with nothing to show for it.
Referral. Our healthcare engineering reputation reached her through a mutual connection in the behavioral health community. We understood that this wasn't an EdTech build — it was a clinical tool that happened to use technology as its delivery mechanism. The engineering had to serve the clinical methodology, not the other way around.
Interactive behavioral therapy platform. Animated social scenarios designed by the clinical team — each scenario targeting specific social-emotional competencies mapped to evidence-based behavior analysis frameworks. Interactive skills practice modules where learners respond to scenarios evaluated against clinically-defined criteria. Gamification layer: points, customizable avatars, peer rankings — providing the positive reinforcement that's central to behavioral therapy. Data tracking system for therapists covering skill area performance, IEP goal progress, behavior plan metrics, and intervention data. Resource center for therapists, parents, and special educators. The entire platform HIPAA-compliant from architecture through deployment — learner data encrypted, access controlled, audit-logged.
Platform launched on time and within budget. Adopted by behavioral therapists, special educators, and parents across multiple states within the first quarter. Session completion rates 3× higher than industry benchmarks for digital therapy tools — because the gamification was designed by a clinician who understood what motivates neurodivergent learners. The psychologist went from serving 30 clients in one practice to reaching thousands of learners through a platform that maintained the clinical rigor of her methodology at digital scale.
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