Our Investment in Avela Health to Deliver Better Autism Care at Scale

January 12, 2026

By The Artemis Fund
The Artemis Fund believes technology can create prosperity for all. With offices in New York, Texas, Massachusetts, and Nevada, Artemis leads seed rounds for companies creating resilient families, individuals, and businesses across the US.
A parent notices their toddler is missing milestones and asks their pediatrician for help, but the system responds slowly. Diagnostic waitlists stretch six to twelve months. Once a diagnosis is secured, the system defaults to hours-based, clinician-heavy therapy models that prioritize utilization over functional progress, placing the operational burden on families. Services are fragmented across providers who rarely coordinate, forcing parents to become case managers during an already fragile moment. The result is delayed intervention, rising costs, and families left to bridge the gaps themselves. This is the reality for millions of parents.
The annual autism-related economic burden in the US is estimated at $75–$105B, spanning direct healthcare costs, special education spending, caregiver productivity loss, and long-term adult support.
Avela Health is building a new operating model for autism care designed around families rather than facilities. The company replaces long waitlists, siloed providers, and rigid care pathways with a virtual-first, family-centered approach that prioritizes speed, coordination, and measurable progress while reducing unnecessary cost and complexity in care delivery. Avela’s model recognizes that autism care often begins during moments of acute family stress and designs for those realities: fast access, continuity across settings, and support that fits into daily life instead of competing with it.
Avela is led by a second-time founding team with rare depth across clinical excellence, payer credibility, and operational scale. CEO Robin McIntosh and COO Katherine Monti previously scaled Workit Health into the nation’s largest virtual Substance Use Disorder provider, while Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Cynthia Anderson is one of the world’s most respected autism researchers, pioneering parent-mediated, naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions.

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The Opportunity
Autism now affects 1 in 31 children in the U.S., making it a system-wide issue, not a fringe diagnosis
83% of U.S. counties lack adequate diagnostic or treatment resources, driving long waitlists and delayed intervention
Families absorb the fallout, with $20–30B lost annually in caregiver productivity due to reduced workforce participation
The Solution
Avela offers an end-to-end care model that spans rapid diagnostic evaluations, a 4–6 month intensive therapeutic episode, and an 18-month structured step-down support phase. Each family works with a dedicated primary clinician, supported by on-demand access to occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, psychology, and psychiatry. Rather than relying on hours-based, center-dependent therapy, Avela embeds evidence-based interventions directly into everyday routines like sleep, transitions, meals, and school coordination. Flexible micro-sessions, asynchronous coaching, identity-based peer groups, and AI-supported personalization reduce friction and shorten time-to-intervention. Early results show 95% of diagnostic consults completed within one week and 87% of families demonstrating clinical improvement by week 12, while reducing autism-related behavioral health spending by 55–75% for payers.
The Impact
Avela represents a fundamentally better operating model for autism care: right-sized, accessible, and built around measurable improvement rather than volume-driven utilization. By shifting care away from rigid, labor-intensive delivery and toward coordinated, time-bound support, Avela helps health plans bend a cost curve that has historically grown unchecked. That efficiency creates room in the system to fund what has long been neglected: earlier diagnostics, school-based coordination, and adult services, without sacrificing quality or outcomes. The result is a care ecosystem that works better for families, scales sustainably for payers, and supports neurodivergent individuals across the lifespan. This is exactly the kind of care infrastructure redesign Artemis exists to back.
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