Rethink: Leading the healthcare industry with a cause

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 1 in 6 newborn children will be diagnosed with a developmental disability (such as autism), making such conditions more common than pediatric cancer, diabetes, and AIDS combined. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is the main treatment methodology recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the US Surgeon General and the US National Institutes of Mental Health for treating individuals with developmental disabilities such as autism.

However, the highly limited availability of credentialed ABA providers - only approximately 30,000 Board Certified Behavior Therapists worldwide - severely limits its potential benefit for the hundreds of millions of individuals globally with such disorders. Limited public support services, including in the education and healthcare systems, further amplify this challenge.

We often tend to forget how the less fortunate people survive. Rethink is building a better world for those who have developmental disabilities like autism or other similar conditions.

Rethink – Inspiring hope, Powering potential

Rethink is a global health technology company that provides cloud-based treatment tools, training and clinical support for individuals with developmental disabilities and their caregivers.

The Company was founded to address the challenge of meeting the treatment needs of the growing population of people with developmental disabilities along with a significant lack of trained professionals. The only way to solve the issue in a scalable way is by integrating technology into it and by training whoever is caring for the individual with the developmental disability how to deliver the treatment.

This method would impact several entities revolving around the care of the population including in the education system, in the home and also in the healthcare system. Rethink combined the effectiveness of video modeling with the proven and medically recommended ABA treatment methodology, creating an online training and support system for individuals with a developmental disability and their caregivers worldwide.

Emerging Trends in the healthcare

Big Data is making a serious impact in the healthcare industry along with AI to provide valuable insights for medical professionals on how to best treat their patients. Currently, there is no perfect way to predict the outcomes of intervention among individuals with developmental disabilities. Rethink helps address the issue by collecting the largest data set of outcomes associated with this population. Rethink believes that one day this data will be used to develop the right treatment protocols and thus facilitate the predictability of outcomes.

Rethink’s Areas of Expertise

Rethink Behavioral Health

Rethink offers an industry-leading practice management platform for behavioral health providers specializing in individuals with autism and related disorders. The platform is used by hundreds of providers serving tens of thousands of children. The software also helps improve treatment outcomes by simplifying workflows and ensuring standardization and clinical fidelity of care delivery.

Employee Benefits

Rethink’s employee caregiver support platform helps employees caring for dependents with a developmental disability with research-based training. Rethink’s clients range from employers with under 1,000 employees to over 500,000 employees.

“Research clearly demonstrates the impact of caring for a dependent with a developmental disability – from over twice the rates of anxiety and depression to thousands of dollars annually in lost productivity.”

This pressures the caregiver to reduce work hours or even to leave the workforce to accommodate the needs of their child. The Rethink program helps support these employees by directly improving their productivity in the workplace.

Rethink Ed

Rethink offers the industry-leading special needs management platform for public school districts serving all students with special needs as well as those requiring behavior supports. School districts, including large urban as well as small rural, in all 50 states use the Rethink program.

The Rethink program allows districts to fully meet Federal IDEA requirements as well as a variety of state-based legislative mandates to provide an adequate education to students with a special need. The program also helps districts train staff and accurately measure the progress of a student population not subject to mainstream standardized testing.

According to district clients, this results in better student outcomes and significant cost savings, mitigating the need for out of district placements that can cost upto $100,000 per year per student for private programs.

A walk through the work culture at Rethink

Just like the services, Rethink offers a scalable and fully integrated solution to address the needs of individuals with a developmental disability and their caregivers. Innovation and dedication are a package deal when it comes to Rethink and hence its employees share a deep passion for helping this population and having a meaningful social impact.

Making a difference

Rethink shared an interesting story with us where the company called ‘Costco Wholesale’ decided to offer the Rethink program its employees who have children with developmental disabilities; apparently, they constituted nearly 20% of the workforce.

According to Donna Sexton, Director of Employee Benefits at Costco: “I can’t think of any benefits we’ve ever added to our suite that got so much attention and so many letters to our president, thanking him for bringing Rethink on, and what a difference it was going to make in their lives.”

Road Ahead

Rethink is in the process of expanding its core product offering beyond treatment tools and supports for dependents with a developmental disability and their caregivers to adults with a developmental disability, including supporting those individuals with a Neurodiverse condition in the workplace.

A word about the Messiah

Daniel Etra is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Rethink. He has over two decades of experience in international business, including 15 years as a serial entrepreneur. Before co-founding Rethink, Etra was the Co-Founder and CEO of R.E.R International. He also worked as a consultant at Bain & Company. He has served in the Israel Defense Forces and worked at Wasserstein, Perella & Co., specializing in M&A in the fields of healthcare, technology, and natural resources. Under his leadership, Rethink has received several awards including the Inc. 500, the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and several others. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Economics from Yale University.

‘‘Rethink provides users with behavioral health e-learning tools, robust data analytics and best in class practice management capabilities – all accessible online’’

‘‘Innovation to us means first and foremost recognizing the problem in the market that we are seeking to address and truly understanding the needs of the customer before developing unique and scalable solutions to address those needs.’’- Daniel Etra CEO, Rethink