At this year’s Appian World in Colorado, I was on a mission to discover some real-world use cases for the company’s technology.
Fortunately, I had the pleasure of sitting down with William Oswald, the technical lead at Acclaim Autism, to learn how his team digitally transformed client intake and backend operations in the behavioral health space.
Acclaim Autism, which supports children on the autism spectrum, faced enormous challenges navigating a highly complex intake process governed by insurance requirements, disorganized documentation and inefficiencies that made care access painfully slow.
“Client intake is extraordinarily complex in the behavioral health space…even people who are versed in the field can find it deeply frustrating,” Oswald explained.
Before adopting Appian, their process involved “spreadsheets on spreadsheets” and folders packed with documents that were hard to track, increasing the risk of human error. Appian solutions enabled Acclaim Autism to not only organize and extract critical information more accurately but also give clients and employees clear visibility into their progress through onboarding.
The impact was immediate and measurable. Intake timelines were slashed from six months to just one, dramatically reducing how long families waited for services. Their AI-powered document extraction tool also achieved a 95% confidence rate in identifying unstructured medical data from diagnosis reports, which was no small feat in a field where every neurologist and pediatrician uses a different format.
“Five months of someone not being on a waitlist is a tremendous impact,” Oswald shared. “The accuracy we’re seeing in extracting diagnosis details has changed everything. That confidence level means less back and forth, and more time spent helping the families who need us.”
Still, the journey wasn’t without bumps. One of the earliest roadblocks came in the form of user interface challenges, something many digital transformation efforts underestimate.
The development team initially made assumptions about what end users would understand, which led to confusion and missing error messages. Over time, however, they evolved the UI to highlight document confidence levels, flag missing items and better guide users through each step.
“There were some assumptions on the developer side…just making it clear to them with the right design was key,” Oswald noted. “It mostly came down to design, not the logic, it was about communication.”
When searching for a new platform, Acclaim Autism transitioned away from Salesforce and briefly explored building a Java application, until they realized it was too large a lift for their lean technical team. With Appian’s low-code environment and strong vendor support, they found the right mix of scalability and accessibility.
“There was an accessibility to Appian we really liked. Their engineers and executives made themselves available in a way other vendors didn’t. It just made sense for our scale,” he said.
Looking ahead, Acclaim Autism is expanding its digital transformation initiative to tackle billing and claims, aiming to bring transparency to another historically frustrating area.
But the organization is careful not to rush into clinical tools, focusing instead on improving the bureaucracy around care delivery. For Oswald, it’s about enabling staff to focus on what really matters: Serving children and families.
“At the end of the day, if it doesn’t work for the employees, the clients, and the kids, it’s not worth doing,” he told me. “The more we can collate and organize in Appian, the clearer the picture becomes, and the faster we can help those who need us.”
It’s a powerful reminder that digital transformation is not just about tech. It’s about reducing time to care and improving outcomes for real people.
