Roux Project Management Student Helps MaineHealth Bring Telehealth to Rural Mainers

For Northeastern student Quynh Nguyen, a co-op opportunity at Maine’s largest healthcare provider was more than just a chance to refine her skills—it solidified her commitment to improving healthcare access for all Mainers.

Originally from Vietnam, Nguyen moved to Maine a few years ago with her now-husband, a native Mainer. Eager to further her education, and with help from a generous scholarship from the Alfond Scholars Initiative, she enrolled at Northeastern University’s Roux Institute to pursue a master’s degree in project management.

Midway through the program, Nguyen applied for a co-op, one of Northeastern’s signature models of experiential learning, designed to help students explore or refine potential career paths, build valuable industry connections, and acquire practical skills and knowledge. Co-op positions are typically full-time, paid roles at a Northeastern partner company that offer students substantial opportunities to immerse themselves in their chosen field. Nguyen had the distinction of being the first Northeastern student to complete her co-op at MaineHealth, a close partner of the Roux Institute and a key player in the institute’s Future of Healthcare Founder Residency program.

During her co-op, Nguyen worked on MaineHealth’s Telehealth team, where she was tasked with understanding and improving equitable access to digital health programs for patients within the MaineHealth system. Digital equity, as defined by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), is a condition where all individuals and communities have the information technology capacity needed for full participation in society, democracy, and the economy. In healthcare, this means that all patients should be able to do things like access their medical records through platforms like MyChart, access video visits, obtain reliable health information online, and protect their health data and safety online.

Nguyen discovered that up to 89% of Mainers are considered “covered populations” under the Digital Equity Act, meaning they are likely to be most impacted by the digital divide. To address these challenges, she dedicated her six-month co-op to researching screening tools and creating a pilot protocol that MaineHealth’s care team in Franklin County could use to assess patients’ needs in terms of digital skills, access to devices, and internet connectivity. She created and implemented a process in which members of MaineHealth’s “Lend a Hand” team would screen incoming patients to assess their need for assistance in accessing telehealth; patients who met the requirement for assistance were given a comprehensive resource index that Nguyen put together after conducting extensive research on programs and resources in Maine that help address digital inequity. This index provided patients with information on how to leverage Maine’s grants and initiatives to access the necessary technology or assistance needed to participate in telehealth.

Stephanie Gagne, a senior manager on the Telehealth team at MaineHealth, said that Nguyen’s education at the Northeastern’s Roux Institute was a significant contributor to her success in bringing this project to life.

“Quynh built a statewide network of digital equity partners and identified a validated screening tool to help members of our care team identify and bridge digital disparities across our service environment,” she said. “She was able to successfully manage the work and quickly became a subject matter expert.”

Nguyen said the co-op not only helped her understand what she wanted to do as a future career, but it also helped her contextualize the project management skills she was learning in class within a real-world environment.

“This co-op position involved building a lasting tool that will continue to help the telehealth team,” Nguyen explained. “In class, there was a big emphasis on building relationships among different partners in the workplace, and that was definitely essential to my success, on top of skills like creating and implementing a full project plan.”