New Grant Gives the MAVEN Project a Chance to Improve its Telehealth Outreach

A national non-profit that uses telehealth to provide mentoring and eConsult services to community health clinics has received a grant to help extend its platform.

The MAVEN Project, which currently helps more than 100 clinics in 13 states with a volunteer network of more than 50 specialties, has been awarded a grant of up to $25,000 from Justworks, a New York-based HR technology company. The money will be used to redesign the non-profit’s connected health platform to enable frontline primary care providers to more easily access resources and consults.

“The … grant will allow us to streamline our telehealth platform to ensure that our partners have a more effective and efficient experience using MAVEN telehealth technology, enabling them to spend more time delivering high-quality care to their patients,” MAVEN Project CEO Dave Segal said in a press release.

Launched in 2014, the Massachusetts-based MAVEN (Medical Alumni Volunteer Expert Network) Project maintains a network of volunteer specialists and doctors to connect with and coach providers working at federally qualified health centers and other community clinics serving underserved populations. The clinician-to-clinician consults are aimed at helping often-overworked and under-resourced doctors and nurses to improve their care management and coordination skills, and to offer guidance on complex or unusual cases.

The service has become especially important during the coronavirus pandemic, when many providers at these clinics found themselves stressed out and in need not only of access to telehealth resources for care management, but support from peers who could help them through tough times.

“The MAVEN Project’s volunteer physicians offer what no AI system or medical database can currently offer – human empathy and the art of medicine coupled with years of clinical practice experience,” former CEO and current advisory board member Lisa Bard Levine said in a February 2019 press release announcing a partnership with telemedicine provider VSee to expand the organization’s online capabilities. 

“There is no shortage of clinics or networks that need us or that wants us,” she said in a 2018 interview with mHealthIntelligence. “Our challenge now is to reach all of them as soon as we can.”

The MAVEN Project now serves clinics in Massachusetts, Alabama, Kansas, Arizona, California, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, South Carolina, Florida, Illinois and Washington.