The Stronger & Healthier communities through INtegration of Emerging Health Tech program (SHINE-HT) is designed to help Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in Massachusetts adopt health tech solutions that support their workforce and improve their care delivery. AI and other health tech solutions are rapidly changing the way health care is delivered by helping to reduce administrative burdens, increasing access to care and improving patient-provider communication.
However, these solutions are often not designed with the unique needs of underrepresented and underserved patient populations and their care providers in mind. Additionally, the FQHCs who serve these patients have limited resources to evaluate, purchase and implement new health tech solutions.
MeHI created the SHINE-HT program to assess FQHC’s health tech needs, identify and test implementations of health tech solutions to meet those needs, and provide incentive funding and consulting services to help FQHCs adopt and utilize proven health tech solutions.
Listening Sessions
In September and October 2025, MeHI hosted listening sessions at five FQHCs across Massachusetts in collaboration with the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. Attendees included administrative and clinical staff, senior leadership and patient representatives. The sessions offered an opportunity for MeHI to hear directly from FQHC staff and patients about existing technologies being used by FQHCs, pain points that can be supported by technology and the barriers they face to adopting new technology. From these sessions, MeHI identified six priority use cases aimed at testing health technology solutions to address specific FQHC pain points.
| Solution/Technology | Use case example | Current vendors with existing solutions to support use case (not exhaustive) |
| AI Call Center |
| AssortHealth, Attuned-Intelligence, Emitrr, Hyro, TalkDesk |
| Ambient scribing |
| Corti AI, DeepScribe, Nabla, Nuance DAX, Suki AI |
| Scheduling solutions |
| Emitrr, Kyruus Health, NexHealth, Phreesia |
| Patient Intake tools |
| Phreesia |
| Prior authorization |
| Assured, BridgeHealthAI, Clearwave, Doctor Alliance, Valer |
| Translation and interpretation services |
| Barrier AI, Callipoe, IQVIA NLP, Lexi, Nabla, WellSky |
| Other |
Pre-Qualification for Implementation Partners
Many FQHCs lack the resources to evaluate, procure and successfully implement new health technologies across their organizations. MeHI has issued a request for proposals (RFP) to pre-qualify organizations with experience in designing and leading implementations of health technologies for community-based health care organizations.
MeHI anticipates pre-qualifying a group of Implementation Partners who will be eligible to receive funding to lead the design and rollout of pilot technology implementations at Massachusetts FQHCs through the SHINE-HT program.
MeHI will award a fixed sum of $70,000 to selected Implementation Partners to complete the scope of services for each pilot implementation. MeHI anticipates funding one pilot implementation in FY26 and additional pilot implementations in future fiscal years. If successful, MeHI anticipates providing funding and support to scale the implementations to additional FQHCs in Massachusetts.
Applications for Implementation Partners are due Friday, Jan. 30, 2026
FQHC Pilot Sites
In Janujary 2026, MeHI solicited proposals from FQHCs in Massachusetts for the FY26 pilot of the SHINE-HT Program. Through a mini-bid process, MeHI selected two FQHCs to conduct pilot implementations of a health technology solution that addresses one of the identified use cases.
Codman Square Health Center will pilot BridgeHealthAI’s technology to support insurance verification and enrollment workflows under the prior authorization use case. Codman has selected Clinovations as their Implementation
Partner.
HealthFirst Family Care Center will pilot BridgeHealthAI’s technology to support insurance verification and enrollment workflows under the prior authorization use case. HealthFirst has selected FastX Partners as their Implementation Partner.
