Autism Testing 4 Kids (AT4K) has raised $2.5 million, according to public documents.
The Grapevine, Texas-based company specializes in and exclusively provides in-person autism evaluations.
The rapid rise in awareness of autism and the relatively fixed number of diagnosticians has created an acute bottleneck for those who may need services. AT4K aims to reduce the amount of time children have to wait for such an evaluation. The company’s certified specialists administer a diagnostic test called the Autism Diagnostic Observable Schedule Second Edition (ADOS-2).
The equity sale involved 46 investors, according to the document.
AT4K was founded earlier in the year by ex-Prospera Healthcare CEO Chris Tillotson along with Michael Freytag and James Lamar.
“We believe there is a huge gap and a need for the opportunity to get evaluations and assessments to more kids potentially with autism,” Tillotson told Autism Business News. “The global view of AT4K is to expand to multiple cities throughout the U.S. We want to be able to provide opportunities for kids to get evaluated.”
The rate of autism has increased steeply in the last 20 years or so. As many as one in 36 children at 8 years old have autism, according to the most recent estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That rate was one in 59 in 2014 and one in 150 in 2000.
Autism therapy providers have previously told ABN that it’s not unusual for autism diagnosis specialists to have waitlists that span months, even up to a year. Some research suggests that the wait times are much worse — more than two years from a screening to a final diagnosis.
The industry has made some progress in recent years. In 2020, children were 60% more likely to be diagnosed at age 4 than they were in 2012.
“This is important because the earlier a child is identified with [autism], the earlier they can access services and support,” a federal report states.
AT4K serves children between the ages of 18 months and six years old.
The company’s top short-term priority is to “find the right clinical teams” in the cities it wishes to operate in. Tillotson said the company plans to establish itself in 10 markets in the next two years.
The company’s in-person diagnoses will be key to the company’s success, Freytag told ABN.
“Just like we look at [applied behavior analysis (ABA)] as the gold standard for caring for a kid with autism, we believe in-person evaluation is the gold standard to identify whether or not a child is on the spectrum.”
Freytag expects the company’s clinicians will enhance efficiency when solely focused on evaluations, helping to address the present diagnostician shortage that prompted the need for more assessment services in the first place.
AT4K also expects that once the company starts marketing (at the time of the interview, the company had not done so) many people who are on waitlists will turn to the company for services. Tillotson also pointed out that children’s hospitals and other large pediatric providers also often have waitlists, with one unnamed hospital partner having a waitlist of 1,500 patients. These providers could be vital future partnerships that would establish the business in a given community, he added.
