Building a scalable autism assessment service for the NHS in 5 months

Paloma Health is on a mission to transform access to neurodevelopmental care in England. To address the NHS’s growing backlog of autism assessments, the team needed to move fast—without compromising on quality, data, or compliance.

In just 5 months, they launched a fully orchestrated, hybrid autism assessment service inclusive of discovery, planning, implementing and testing.

The challenge: Complex clinical care, urgent timelines

Autism assessment pathways involve in-person and remote sessions, multiple stakeholders (parents, teachers, GPs, clinicians), and detailed diagnostic documentation. Coordinating all of this across a high-volume NHS service meant solving for:

• Consistent, high-quality patient experiences

• Streamlined communication and scheduling

• Full visibility of where every patient is in their journey

Paloma needed to launch fast with the ability to iterate continuously—and scale with control and compliance.

The solution & impact: Fast, flexible, fully orchestrated

Paloma chose a modular approach, with Awell as the orchestration layer at the heart of their stack. The platform stitched together key systems—handling data collection, appointment booking, automated communication, and integrations with their EHR and analytics.

Just 5 weeks after kickoff, the first autism assessment pathway was launched and included 9 care flows and over 100 data points.

After 4 months of being live, over 1,300 referrals entered their care flows and they were able to iterate and improve on over 70 versions of their care flow.

Paloma continues to expand, with new pathways like ADHD on the roadmap.

“Speed alone isn’t enough. We needed a platform to orchestrate every moving part across data, comms, and clinical workflows. Awell gave us both speed and structure, letting us move fast without building from scratch, and still meet the complexity and quality demands of care.” - Avishai Gurt, VP Technology, Paloma