“How can I find food for my family?”
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Amy Smith and her colleagues faced unprecedented numbers of patients asking this question. The pandemic had disrupted pre-existing systems for connecting patients with food. Healthcare systems were overwhelmed and struggled to field the personnel necessary to address the social needs of patients. The result was devastating: a historic high in food insecurity and an inadequate system for helping patients find food.
As physicians, Amy and her colleagues knew that consistent access to healthy food was a medical necessity. They turned to their community to find resources for their patients. Dr. Smith and her team quickly found that food insecurity stemmed from insufficient food resource coordination, not a lack of supply. Pantries were working around the clock to get people food, while local government agencies were pivoting to direct their efforts toward food programming. Hunger organizations were ready with food, but there was no process for connecting them to patients.
Amy decided to build the solution her patients needed. She reached out to her friend Tim Spong, a software engineer and CEO of VistaPath Biosystems. They decided that building a software platform was the right way to coordinate patient care. From his years in the medtech sector, Tim knew how to leverage electronic medical record (EMR) systems to improve healthcare workflows. Together, Amy and Tim built a solution that met the unique needs of physicians, community food workers, and patients.
Since launching our platform in 2020, we’ve referred over 2,000 patients for free food delivery. We’ve formed strong partnerships with the Mass General Brigham and Cambridge Health Alliance systems. Feed to Heal and Project Bread, a community partner, have crafted a robust SNAP referral process that has reached over 1,000 patients. Our platform has received national attention, and we’re initiating collaborations across the country.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has faded, food insecurity is still rampant. Along with a wide array of partners, we’re helping shape a system to end it.
Our Solution
Created in collaboration with Deep Why Design, the Feed to Heal platform is a patient-centered referral system. Our process begins when patients are flagged as insecure during food need screenings, which are regularly completed within a hospital's electronic medical record during a visit. With a patient’s consent, their information is then passed to Feed to Heal. Our software uses patient location to match them with food programming in their area. The patient is then notified via text, and their information is simultaneously added to the client database of the appropriate food pantry. We have built our platform to integrate with any web-based food pantry database.
Our technology automates the referral process, freeing physicians and community workers to focus on patient care. The platform is designed for closed-loop referral. Feed to Heal tracks patient behavior and shares the anonymized outcomes with our clinical and community partners. We continually review our data to help drive improvements in the broader food assistance system.
The Feed to Heal Referral Ecosystem
Our Team
Amy Smith
Amy Smith, MD, MPH spent her early years in remote areas of Honduras, where her family developed the first hospital in the region and her love of clinical medicine and public health was born. She received the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation scholarship, completed a BA in nutritional sciences at Cornell University, an MD at George Washington University, and an MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health. She then completed residency in Family Medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA)-Tufts in Malden. Since residency she has worked as a primary care physician at CHA. . While managing a busy practice she has worked on various quality and process improvement projects across her healthcare organization. She is committed to partnering with others in systems change and innovation towards improved health and well-being for all, particularly for its most vulnerable community members. Amy is the founder and CEO of Feed to Heal.
Tim Spong
Tim Spong has more than 15 years experience in healthcare, software design and entrepreneurship. After beginning his career managing and developing pathology labs, he founded VistaPath, an industry leader in laboratory automation and distributed computing systems. He has a community health background, serving as a volunteer at ASCP’s See, Test, Treat program and as a volunteer EMT. Tim also serves as an advisor for MIT’s Entrepreneurship Club and Ethical Technology Initiative.
Jack Wish
Jack Wish is dedicated to using scientific inquiry and technology to address health-related social needs. At Tufts University, Jack focuses his studies on biology, biochemistry, and clinical psychology. He is committed to community-level health interventions, and works as a volunteer EMT and peer mental health counselor. Jack has a strong foundation in health disparity research, having previously served as a surgical outcome disparity researcher at Weill Cornell Medical Center. Jack is eager to help improve the Boston area’s food security programming. He currently assists Feed to Heal as a Project Manager.