CentralReach unifies 4 billion clinical data points with MongoDB

THEIR CHALLENGE

Supporting behavior analysts for CentralReach

With 1 in 31 children in the United States diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, the demand for specialized care has skyrocketed. Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) play an important role in supporting people diagnosed with autism, helping them develop skills and strategies that enhance their quality of life and independence. Yet there are 75,000 BCBAs in the U.S., leaving many without adequate care. These clinicians also face overwhelming administrative burdens due to time-consuming manual processes and complex documentation requirements that vary widely across insurance providers.

CentralReach is on a mission to address this care gap. Its electronic medical record platform provides a unified approach to practice management, clinical delivery, and AI-powered assistance to help clinicians deliver more effective care while reducing administrative overhead. Today, the company serves more than 200,000 professionals globally who support approximately 400,000 patients with autism and related intellectual and developmental disabilities.

At the heart of CentralReach’s platform is Care360, a care management solution designed to create a consolidated view of each individual receiving services. Care360 aggregates data from diverse sources, including assessments, clinical documentation, and session notes. In 2022, the company realized that its data needs were growing fast. With more than 4 billion clinical data points overall, a number growing by 1B+ annually, and approximately 62 million service appointments per year, CentralReach needed a modern database solution that could flexibly handle diverse data types while enabling powerful AI-driven insights.

“As we evolved our clinical solution and expanded its functionality through our Care360 solution, we saw an opportunity to evolve our infrastructure to both solve the problem at hand and future-proof the solution in the long run,” said Chris Sullens, CEO at CentralReach. “It quickly became apparent that using a document database like MongoDB was the best way to do it.”

OUR SOLUTION

Using MongoDB to unify 4 billion data points for enhanced autism care delivery

CentralReach selected MongoDB Atlas as the foundation for its Care360 platform, using the flexible document model to aggregate diverse clinical data from multiple sources. MongoDB Atlas offered CentralReach the ideal combination of a flexible document model and robust AI capabilities to power the next generation of clinical tools. Using this document model, CentralReach seamlessly integrates 4 billion monthly data points from assessments, clinical notes, treatment plans, and other documentation into a unified interface for providers, giving them a single view of each individual under their care.

By structuring data in the MongoDB document model, CentralReach can easily enrich records with metadata extracted from natural language processing and other AI techniques. “Everyone in the world is learning new things every day as we pursue AI initiatives,” said Sullens. “The MongoDB Atlas document model enables the flexibility to continually iterate and enrich the information we know.”

CentralReach also uses MongoDB Atlas Vector Search to power semantic querying capabilities, which means clinicians can use natural language to retrieve relevant information about patients without needing to know exactly where it’s stored. This significantly reduces the time spent searching through records and helps maintain continuity of care, which is especially valuable when new clinicians join a patient’s care team.

And to accelerate the development of its AI capabilities, CentralReach joined the MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP) in 2024. Thanks to this collaboration, CentralReach gained access to experts across the full AI stack who helped them design and optimize the architecture for the Care360 application. Working with MAAP technology partner LlamaIndex, CentralReach developed robust pipelines for document ingestion, parsing, extraction, and indexing that enhance the MongoDB document model capabilities. Additionally, the company collaborated with MAAP partner gravity9 to implement data enrichment pipelines and Q&A agentic workflows that facilitate scalable content retrieval and intelligent querying for unstructured data.

The resulting system creates a comprehensive clinical record that’s accessible to everyone involved in a patient’s care. “The idea is that the whole care team — including the caregivers, the parents, and other people providing help outside of the clinical setting — have access to all this rich information about what’s working and what’s not working,” said Sullens. “The patient is getting the most value for the time and funding available.”

OUTCOME

Supporting thousands of patients and providers with AI

CentralReach’s AI-powered platform, built on MongoDB Atlas, is making major strides in addressing the autism care gap. By automating administrative tasks and providing seamless access to patient information, clinicians can focus on direct care. The solution helps reduce documentation errors that could lead to insurance claim denials and prevent clinical information from being lost during staff transitions. This translates to more stable, consistent care.

“At the end of the day, the clinical solutions we have built and are building will improve the efficiency of clinical staff, empower them to transform the way care is delivered, and expand the number of individuals who receive care, making it a win for families, a win for the field, and most importantly, a win for those children and adults we collectively serve,” said Sullens.

Looking ahead, CentralReach plans to extend Care360’s capabilities. The company is exploring real-time predictive analytics to anticipate clinical plan needs, AI-driven decision support to recommend interventions, and dynamic care planning that adapts in real time to patient progress. By continuing to build on MongoDB’s flexible foundation, CentralReach can rapidly iterate on these innovations while maintaining the performance and security needed for healthcare applications.

“We’re both honored and energized by the ability to fully take advantage of MongoDB, the MAAP network, and our unparalleled set of assets to accelerate the timeline for delivering on our Care360 vision,” said Sullens.

Discover how you can build modern AI applications by visiting MongoDB for Artificial Intelligence.