iCONNECT

In the U.S., individuals with substance use disorder (SUD) must navigate a convoluted web of resources when seeking support and treatment that are either internal or external to the healthcare system because the services are fragmented with systemic barriers.1 According to summary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), recent opioid overdose trends show an alarming and accelerated increase. Between 2013 and 2019, deaths from synthetic opioids like fentanyl increased by over 1,000%.2   Today, drug overdose kills over 136 Americans each day.3 The latest statistics from the CDC indicate that, last year, there were more than 108,000 opioid use related deaths, which is equivalent to 296 individuals every day. This pernicious problem is reflected in global populations as well, from Italy and Australia to Kazakhstan and Ukraine, with the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting similar numbers and trends.4 

Currently, individuals with SUD and their caretakers, such as peer recovery specialists (PRS), county social workers, and family members, need to use search engines with the correct syntax to locate and verify the availability of necessary resources. If they are able to find a relevant list, then they still have to call or visit to inquire about the availability of these resources, like shelters and residencies, methadone patient openings, or recovery program enrollments. Additionally, medical referrals may be required to utilize these resources, which creates more lost time.. This learned hopelessness leads to abandonment of the resource-seeking process entirely and reliance on crisis and emergency services that are already overburdened. Because the critical factors affecting these support resources are multidimensional in both size and scope, they necessitate a reliable solution that simplifies the process of identifying, locating, and utilizing community aid.

References:

1. Comprehensive Case Management for Substance Abuse Treatment Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series. (2015). https://store.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/d7/priv/sma15-4215.pdf

2. Mattson, C. L., Tanz, L. J., Quinn, K., Kariisa, M., Patel, P., & Davis, N. L. (2021). Trends and Geographic Patterns in Drug and Synthetic Opioid Overdose Deaths — United States, 2013–2019. MMWR. 70(6), 202–207. https://doi-org.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7006a4

3. Drug Overdose Death Statistics: Fentanyl, Opioids, Heroin & More. (2019). NCDAS. https://drugabusestatistics.org/drug-overdose-deaths/

4. World Health Organization. (2021). Opioid Overdose. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/opioid-overdose 

Our technology solution is a mobile application, iCONNECT (Coordinating Opioid Network Needs with Expert Clinical Teams), that connects individuals with SUD and their caretakers to local resources. iCONNECT is a platform-agnostic app that aims to create human connections, both virtual and in-person, for individuals with SUD, as well as their caretakers and PRS. The app bridges human connections by connecting users to the right community resources at the critical moments. These community resources include food pantries, housing assistance, medical services, treatment programs, peer support, crisis calls, and other aspects of the social determinants of health. The app will automate uploading county resources in order to keep the resource information current, and, as the app rolls out nationwide by counties in different states, there will be an auto-upload feature of resources by county.

Our competitive landscape analysis (screenshot of visual summary inserted below) revealed other related apps across the substance use and recovery journey genres, from (i) awareness and prevention and (ii) harm reduction to (iii) lowering barriers to treatment, but these apps are not focused on connecting community resources to individuals. iCONNECT connects local resources to local residents and bridges the human connection that supports individuals on their recovery journey. Websites that list the location of methadone clinics or support group meetings, including those from Federal agencies, do not provide updates or availability of the community resource and are difficult to use in a phone form factor. We, on the other hand, aim to be more like the OpenTable app for SUD recovery. Our unique value proposition is that we tailor the app to provide updates and availability of local community resources for our county customers. Along the recovery value chain for end users with SUD, we plan to (i) optimize the use of resources, (ii) reduce clinic/program readmissions, (iii) decrease OD related deaths, and (iv) save time for the county workers.

We are taking a phased-approach to prove technical feasibility by releasing our product to select organizations in Fairfax County before implementing it to other regional counties in Virginia. Our progressive approach is complementary with the MIT Solve training in that it helps us to fine-tune our technical solution, build connections, collaborate with others and business growth. We are currently developing a pilot prototype of iCONNECT to gain feedback for the navigation, design, and user experience from different users in our target population. This target population is primarily individuals who suffer from SUD and their caretakers and family members, including agency and non-governmental (NGO) workers. During our customer and problem discovery phases, we interviewed four health practitioners, two parents, two researchers, and 12 PRSs and county workers. These partners have provided invaluable feedback on how difficult it is to coordinate healthcare for individuals with SUD, which leads them to struggle with their recovery.  

A brief demo of the current version of our app is publically available on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNlzNinMh0Y

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Our target users are individuals with SUD and their caretakers and family members, such as PRSs, clinics, hospital and health insurance companies’ case managers, electronic health record vendors, and state (community service boards), and federal government agencies (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA]). The early influencers and intended users of our product, who primarily focus on reducing the number of substance use related overdose, include the Fairfax Falls Church Community Service Board, Chris Atwood Foundation, and Inova Fair Oaks Hospital, as well as Mile Square Center in Chicago, a Federally Qualified Health Center. Individuals will download the app from the Google and Apple stores for free, while State and Federal government agencies, hospitals, large enterprises,  and healthcare-related software vendors and payers will be charged a subscription fee. 

Currently, the community resources that support individuals with SUD are fragmented and scarce. Individuals and their caretakers who we have interviewed repeatedly noted that they did not know the correct words to search for resources online, and when they do find the resource, like a close by methadone clinic, there is no availability or the hours are very limited to align with their current job. The prevention and awareness, social determinants of health (SDOH)-related resources, harm reduction, and crisis and distress lifelines are offered by atomized agencies with scarce resources that do not necessarily serve clients in a continuum. Patients and their families do not know how to evaluate the clinics, rehabilitation and detoxification centers. They are afraid of the stigma that comes with visiting and inquiring about SUD-related resources or whether the medical treatments are covered by health  insurance. The parents who have experience with their child overdosing or substance use might also be reluctant to talk to providers and case managers, as they might believe it would create potential problems for their child with the law enforcement. However, the parents would be able to self-search resources on iCONNECT as a guest. Our app will be a vital tool to serve these needs.

Following the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and the U.S. Surgeon General recovery and recovery-oriented systems of care principles, iCONNECT's biggest impact is connecting individuals and families to hope, resources, and a lifeline that the SUD-related challenges and circumstances can be overcome. When an individual is desperate to overcome substance use urges, they need encouragement, support, coping skills, resources, and hope to get to the next step of recovery. Hope is the foundation of recovery. Our solution seeks to help individuals build self-confidence by providing one stop for self-management and searching for resources. iCONNECT helps individuals overcome barriers, like transportation, shelter, and coordinating appointments. Our app functionalities are built upon NAM’s four major dimensions of substance use recovery: (i) build confidence and assist individuals to manage one’s SUD, (ii) connect resources for stable and safe shelter, (iii) link resources to establish purpose (employment, school, and independent self-care) and (iv) restore or establish social relationships within a community that provide support, hope, and love.

Our team lives in Fairfax Falls Church county in Northern Virginia. Our partners and our university faculty and advisors are residents of the community. We are building the solution for our neighborhood as a beachhead as well as to fight a very real local opioid epidemic. Rebecca Leung, our team leader, has been an intern with Inova hospital and has been working with patients suffering from SUD and their families to connect with community resources. She has been obtaining the clinician and case managers’ perspective of what solution will help the patients on their recovery journey return to baseline into the community. Through her internship, Rebecca is active on Inova’s community action committee to understand the community agencies’ programs and how to collaborate to serve individuals with mental illness and SUD. In addition, Rebecca worked as a National Association on Mental Illness (NAMI) helpline specialist and fielded many calls from individuals with SUD who required help to navigate local resources even as simple as the public transportation route to a methadone clinic.

Our community partners are PRSs who have lived experiences in the recovery journey and they are currently working with individuals with SUD. The PRS’ collaborated with us to provide requirements that will help this vulnerable population. Using focus groups, brainstorm design sessions and prototype testing, we refined the taxonomy, design and navigation to ensure minimal barriers for users to get connected to local resources. iCONNECT functionality design road map is set in stages, where we will release minimal functionality with a manual database for resource to allow immediate use by the counties we implement the app. In future releases, we will partner with local stakeholders of the next county throughout Northern Virginia. After rolling out to Northern Virginia, our goal is to take the app to nearby states like Maryland, DC, and beyond.

The value of iCONNECT is providing available community resources in near real-time to individuals with SUD and their social network. These critical moments equate to meaningful connections that can reduce clinic readmissions, decrease overdose instances, and serve as a tool to coordinate healthcare among country, clinical, and emergency workers alike. When individuals are under the influence or their families are under stress, they are just one click away from a meaningful resource and human connection. Resource information and availability is displayed directly through the app, so users do not need to figure out the right search terms or syntax, thus reducing inquiry time. The large-scale impact of iCONNECT is that it unlocks the value of existing local resources by efficiently (i) connecting help to individuals on their recovery journey, (ii) coordinating the ecosystem of community resources, and (iii) highlighting the closest available resources. In short, iCONNECT saves resources, saves time, and saves lives.  

Over time, this app will also have anonymized data to show how the demand of SUD recovery resources outstrips supply. The pandemic has exacerbated substance abuse issues, and iCONNECT will have the data to indicate demand and needs. We hope the data will help the Commonwealth make informed funding decisions.

iCONNECT has advanced beyond a simple conceptual idea and is currently being prepared for implementation in Fairfax-Falls Church County, Virginia. We have developed a beta version of the app that is, at present, being tested by a number of key stakeholders within our local community (Prototype); namely, the PRSs at the Chris Atwood Foundation (CAF). The collective feedback that we receive from these initial user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) tests will shape the final version that is launched through both Android Google Play and Apple App Store (Pilot). Overall, this user data will be leveraged to inform and guide our later stages of deploying the app infrastructure out to other counties around the region (Growth) and the nation at large (Scale). More specifically, this app will eventually have anonymized data to show how the demand of SUD recovery resources outstrips supply. The pandemic has exacerbated substance abuse issues, and iCONNECT will have the data to indicate demand and needs. We hope the data will help the Commonwealth make informed funding decisions.

After internal testing among our immediate team members (three people), our solution is now being beta tested by several PRS from the CAF (≤ five people). Once this step is complete, then it will serve up to 18 PRS from the Foundation, as well as all of their clients and affiliates. iCONNECT has been strategically designed to support the needs of its users, whether they are industry professionals working in the recovery space or struggling individuals in need. Upon full release, it will support hundreds and even thousands of simultaneous users for either intermittent or frequent engagement. 

The REAN HealthGuru platform, through which the conversational bot will be built, is used by 30,000  cardiovascular and maternal patients for self-management.

We are looking to partner with MIT Solve and collaborate with other Solver teams to find solutions to a challenge pervasive in the multifaceted world of community resource agencies. Agencies update their hours of operation, address or website address on an ongoing basis. Their resource availability changes on a minute-by-minute basis. When the community partners refer patients, individuals, and their caretakers to the nonprofit local partners, it is unclear if there is availability, if the agency is open, or if the address is correct. We would like to explore in-kind software licensing and brainstorm solutions that secure crowdsourcing and leverage machine learning, a conversational bot (REAN foundation partner), artificial intelligence, and optimal data design with other solvers. The healthcare continuum for mental illness and SUD is broken. We are looking for other solutions in that continuum to partner with inside the Solver community. In particular, the REAN foundation technology platform leverages MIT open source code. We are hoping to find synergies between MIT Solve and our partners to optimize client self-engagement, thereby bringing them hope and confidence. Our app will also collect anonymized resource search and matching data, which will provide insight into demand. We would welcome suggestions on impact measure evaluation as we scale our app and implement across multiple counties nationwide. We look forward to working with other Solver researchers and data scientists to pool together data to understand how to influence state budgets to optimally provide community resources. 

Lastly, we built this app to solve a social challenge--the substance use epidemic. Since the beginning, it has been a project of passion to reduce overdose occurrences and deaths. We would like to join a powerful network of social change oriented influencers, leaders, and individuals who can coach and suggest how we can market and implement the app by county and state in a self-sustaining way, given our current hybrid business model. Receiving access to funding sources from grants and investments in the MIT Solve network is a strong motivator for us as well. The MIT Solve strategic coaching and credibility that comes with access to funding will provide the “quick win boost” and vote of confidence for our project that has a lot of community stakeholder support.

We are taking a multi-solution perspective to solve the problem of how to find community partners with resource availability for individuals suffering from SUD. The profiles of the community partners are very different, with no standardization of how they update or maintain availability or logistics (address, open hours etc.) information. We will utilize processes and technical solutions to provide real time availability and logistics information to the users. Our team is taking a conservative implementation approach.

Although it is only a prototype, iCONNECT features innovative functionalities, such as automatically updating resource availability and providing tailored resource listings with public transportation options superimposed onto an interactive map. This design helps to more effectively deploy existing community assets and coordinate resources with caretakers and PRS in order to aid patients on their recovery journey. Coordinating local resources to scaffold the patient’s mental health, physical well-being, and social environment will decrease the chances of relapse, thereby lessening the economic costs on the country and the human toll in the community. The large-scale impact will increase as we deploy the app to multiple counties across the state and then, ultimately, nationwide.

In terms of work in progress, we partnered with a nonprofit organization in our community, the REAN Foundation, to create innovative solutions, leveraging artificial intelligence and other technologies to solve the pervasive problem of providing real-time availability updates and changes to the operating hours of our community resources. In addition, to increase the local capacity of health resources while improving on bridging human connection, we are designing a conversational bot with the REAN HealthGuru Platform. This tool will match the needs of our target users to community health  workers, peer recovery specialists, behavioral health clinicians, and the crisis line. Through this collaboration, we are planning some additional functionalities, such as Appointment Reminders and Follow-Ups, Medical Reminders, Motivational Support from Peers, and Direct Support for Social Needs

The REAN HealthGuru platform shown below is open-sourced under MIT license on GitHub. This stack is already being used by reputed institutions like the American Heart Association (AHA) for the self-management of cardiovascular health, PATH for self-management of mental health, NICE foundation (India) for maternal health, and others. In the process, the REAN HealthGuru platform has already undergone a HIPAA audit.

Our impact goal includes having every certified peer recovery specialist (PRS) in Fairfax and Falls Church county download iCONNECT for free.  From there, the snowball approach is for the PRS to help their clients download iCONNECT so they can be linked to local resources according to the client’s zip code, thus leveraging technology to help users navigate the vetted local resource search. Once iCONNECT is successfully released to Falls Church and Fairfax county, we will execute joint marketing with the Fairfax Falls Church Community Service Board to broaden the target users to individuals suffering from SUD, their caretakers and families, case managers at hospitals and health insurance companies, and PRS’ at different substance use related community agencies. With Fairfax county successfully launched, we can use the business case as “past performance” to write for grants at other counties, like Arlington. We will change the database to include Arlington county related resources, and partner with Arlington County Community Services Board to roll out the app for target users in Arlington.  We will roll out one county at a time in Virginia before we go to the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Progress towards our impact goals will be measured according to the completion of discrete project tasks over time, as described in the Work Plan outlined below:

Opioid overdose (OD) is a significant concern for the U.S. public health sector. In 2017, the U.S. government spent more than $1T on opioid use disorder (OUD) and fatal OD, even though relapse rates still remained above 90%.5,6 Opioids were involved in nearly 50,000 deaths in 2019, which was greater than six times the same statistic in 1999.7 Although overdose deaths were already increasing in the months preceding the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the latest numbers indicate a recent acceleration of overdose deaths. According to the CDC, over 108,000 drug overdose deaths occurred in the U.S. between March 2021 and March 2022, which is more than 12 deaths per hour. This total is the highest number of OD deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period, according to recent provisional data from the CDC.8 (screenshot of visual summary inserted below, “Opioid Epidemic - Big Picture”).

The current opioid epidemic is the result of a confluence of factors; namely, drug companies assertively promoted the safety and use of prescription opioids as a means of treating chronic pain, despite serious risks and a lack of evidence as to the effectiveness of long-term use.9 In 2002, the supply of heroin and illegally produced fentanyl began to surge.10 (screenshot of visual summary inserted below, “Opioid Epidemic - National Trend”). Additionally, the stigma surrounding substance use increased, while access to medication-assisted treatment and syringe exchange programs decreased.11 Inadequate access to a continuity of care resources following hospitalization and substance rehabilitation exacerbates circumstances and facilitates further negative outcomes once an individual with SUD transitions out of programmatic supervision.  We seek to address this problem of insufficient care coordination for individuals with SUD on their recovery journey.

Our theory of change is to leverage technology to bridge the gaps in the U.S. SUD healthcare continuum, from acute care to supporting and improving the social determinants of health (SDoH) of the patients. Additionally, our vision is to use technology to improve human connection, as evidence shows that when a person struggling with SUD decides to engage in treatment programs, the feelings of loneliness and isolation can be intensified. Additionally, as mentioned above, iCONNECT also is built on the U.S. Surgeon General and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM)’s recovery and recovery-oriented systems of care principles; the foundation of recovery is hope. Our app functionalities support the four major dimensions of recovery, health, shelter, purpose and community.

References:

1. ‌The Science of Drug Use and Addiction: The Basics. (2020). NIDA. https://www.drugabuse.gov/publ... on 2021, October 27.

2. A Comparative Study of Factors Associated with Relapse in Alcohol Dependence and Opioid Dependence. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

3. Opioid Data Analysis and Resources. https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/da...

4. Overdose Deaths Accelerating During COVID-19. https://www.cdc.gov/media/rele...

5. CDC 2017 Annual Surveillance Report of Drug-Related Risks and Outcomes. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdo...

6. Opioid Epidemic: Addiction Statistics. https://drugabusestatistics.or...

7. The Prescription Opioid and Heroin Crisis: A Public Health Approach to an Epidemic of Addiction. Kolodny et al. (2015). https://www.annualreviews.org/...

The value of iCONNECT is providing available community resources and social connections in near real-time to individuals with SUD and their social network. These critical moments equate to meaningful connections that can reduce clinic readmissions, decrease overdose instances, and serve as a tool to coordinate healthcare among country, clinical, and emergency workers alike. When individuals are under the influence or their families are under stress, they are just one click away from a meaningful resource and human connection. Resource information and availability is displayed directly through the app, so users do not need to figure out the right search terms or syntax, thus reducing inquiry time. The large-scale impact of iCONNECT is that it unlocks the value of existing local resources by efficiently (i) connecting help to individuals on their recovery journey, (ii) coordinating the ecosystem of community resources, and (iii) highlighting the closest available resources. In short, iCONNECT saves resources, saves time, and saves lives by providing SUD related resources with social connections in a single app. 

iCONNECT leverages technical functionalities, such as automatically updating resource availability and providing tailored resource listings with public transportation options superimposed onto an interactive map by leveraging the latest research in taxonomy search, conversational bot, crowdsourcing, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. This design helps to more effectively match existing community assets and coordinate resources with caretakers and PRS in order to aid patients on their recovery journey. Coordinating local resources to scaffold the patient’s mental health, physical well-being, and social environment will decrease the chances of relapse, thereby lessening the economic costs on the country and the human toll in the community. The large-scale impact will increase as we deploy the app to multiple counties across the state and then, ultimately, nationwide.

Our partner, REAN Foundation’s vision is to remove barriers to providing healthcare solutions in new and innovative ways to remote populations. Their HIPAA compliant solutions provide secure, customized support for unique challenges faced by different user groups while providing assistance in local language. In collaboration with REAN Foundation, we will like to build further core functionalities for iConnect including including PeerConnect using conversational chatbot with REAN platform, designing and content management of a resource database and Auto update features for selected resources (i.e., when hours of the clinics change or availability information like Open Table).

Our team has grown substantially since our inception nearly two years ago. We are a dynamic group of international and interdisciplinary contributors with diverse identities and unique perspectives that are committed to the core principles of DEI and anti-racism in all aspects of our work. Consistent with the MIT Statement, we represent diversity “across geography, [race], gender, stage, technology, approach, business model,...sector, technical expertise, and more.” We are woman-led, minority-majority, and generationally varied. The quintessential nature of our business is bridging human connections, and we are dedicated to this mission without bias or discrimination. As we advance our product and make progress in this space, we will continue to serve as a conduit through which systemic barriers may be overcome and people of all identities may be brought together for the betterment of society.

Our potential target customers are hospitals, NGOs, and counties and state agencies who serve the population with SUD. iCONNECT as an intervention is akin to the app OpenTable, where individuals with SUD and their families would use iCONNECT for free, and enterprises like hospitals, county, and state agencies would pay a subscription fee per user. Individual PRS, case managers, and social workers will be individual subscribers for the app in the enterprise. Included in the annual fixed maintenance and support price would be an initial startup cost for administrative training and uploading the local community resources into the app database. We plan to mitigate business risk by piloting the app. As part of customer growth, we will extend to other counties in Virginia and then use the same model for the counties in other states. In the future, we can also sell the underlying technology of automatically updating resource availability to Federal agencies, like SAMHSA and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Our business approach is to first partner with the community service boards and NGOs of different Virginia counties to understand their specific needs and tailor a solution to them. Examples of potential customers, who are also our key community health stakeholders, include administrators at hospitals, clinics, and/or NGOs, risk and case manager directors, and purchasing decision makers who are responsible for improving the efficiencies of their departments. iCONNECT’s value proposition of connecting local resources to patients reduces readmission rates (for patients who overdosed and are released to recovery programs and resources), saves lives (reduce deaths after overdose), improves efficiency to connect individuals and families with local resources to buttress individuals’ recovery journey). Individuals will download the app for free from the Google and Apple store. The hospitals, clinics, health insurance companies, enterprise wide health vendors (like Epic and Unite Us), state agencies and federal government will pay a subscription fee or use grant funding to sustain the maintenance of this app and its resource content updates. We will segment the market based on the size of the stakeholder/customer entity size within the target county.

Our cost structure is heavier in the initial years when we are designing, obtaining feedback from PRS and users, and developing the application and then on marketing of roll out in each county to the PRS who work for state agencies. The PRS are our channels to users, their caretakers, the hospitals, clinics, payers and other local NGOs. Individuals will access the app for free, but enterprises and vendors will provide revenue. Our app will save hours a day for each case manager and PRS and reduce readmit rates at the hospitals and rehabilitation centers, and a portion of the savings will be how we will calculate iCONNECT subscription will be. Once the core functions are developed for iCONNECT, research on how to leverage the latest technology to update and collect resource availability, which is a major challenge for local NGOs, is where we are looking for MIT Solve as a partner.

Our intention is to commercialize the app and its underlying technology. From day one, we have been closely working with our community partners and stakeholders, including parents who have lost children to fatal overdose and PRS currently working in the field. Our goal is to demonstrate that iCONNECT can be successfully deployed in Fairfax Country, the state of Virginia, and then the nation. Our community partners at the Fairfax Falls Church Community Service Board and Chris Atwood Foundation are our mentors and advisors. Together, with the guidance of our Principal Investigator (PI), collaborating faculty members, and community stakeholders we have garnered human and financial resources to build iCONNECT prototype for local partner PRS beta testing. 

We have a social solution, our mobile app, that is integrated with our business activities. Our business model is that we receive subscription revenue from large enterprises electronic health records vendors, payers, clinics and hospitals. The hospital and the health vendors are able to link iCONNECT with their platform, which allows case managers to refer to local resources that support patients’ factors under social determinants of health (SDOH). The case managers can save time in finding resources during discharge for patients and with success of using the local supports, the readmit rates will be lowered. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the average cost of readmittance per patient is $15,000 in 2018 and the penalty for Medicare patients readmitted could be up to 3% of the reimbursement (Allen, 2019; AHRQ, 2021). For the State agency who work with individuals with SUD, we are looking for a fee by the agency to sustain the product so the State certified PRS will be able to use iCONNECT. The PRS can introduce the app to their clients, who will be able to install the app for free as individuals.

The success of iCONNECT will be measured in our SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based) goals to deploy the app to our current PRS and case workers at the Fairfax Falls Church Community Service Board and Chris Atwood Foundation. We will obtain specific and measurable feedback of how the app has helped them to make more human connections instead of simply relying on manually locating the available resources. The development and limited implementation of the beta prototype to Fairfax and Falls Church Counties is both achievable and relevant within the next 12 months before advancing to the other counties in Virginia. To this end, we have already initiated talks with community partners in Arlington County.

To date, our research and development efforts have been funded by the CASBBI NRT program (DGE 1922598). In addition to this MIT Solve application, we have also applied to the VentureWell Accelerator. The submission is under review currently. The director of CASBBI sees the social impact that our app has made while we are working with our community stakeholders and has continued to support our efforts in financial and human resources. Furthermore, the Fairfax Falls Church county and the Chris Atwood Foundation PRS have provided human resources to provide design and functionality feedback to our prototypes. The PRS are test-using the app while working with their clients. Recently, we partnered with the REAN foundation to leverage their conversational bot technology for distress screening and PRS matching in the PeerConnect function. Together with other Solver Teams and network of solution workers, we are looking to solve the most pervasive problem of real time updates and availability of neighborhood resource agencies.

We are nearing the end of prototype testing with our community PRS and we have applied for and given the permission to upload iCONNECT to the Google and the Apple store. The community PRS are excited to help their clients download the app and use it for finding resources and obtain support. We will utilize social media, community service board and rehabilitation centers to market the app for individuals to download for free. With an increased volume of users, we will then approach Inova hospital where our team leader is an intern to discuss with the case management and readmit related decision makers for an enterprise subscription to maintain the application. We will also sell enterprise subscriptions to electronic health vendors (Epic and Unite Us) and payers to cover the costs of maintenance and development.