project echo

What project echo does

Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a non-profit telementoring program founded in 2003 by Dr. Sanjeev Arora at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque. It operates a hub-and-spoke model in which specialist teams at academic medical centers connect with community healthcare providers in underserved and rural areas via video conferencing, enabling ongoing mentoring, case-based learning, and continuing professional education rather than direct patient care. The platform has expanded globally, with active operations in the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa, and has been applied across multiple health and social-issue domains through partner institutions.

The core technology is a video-conferencing-based telementoring architecture with a novel hub-and-spoke methodology branded as the 'ECHO Model for Telehealth,' supported by a related UNM Center for Telehealth department. Distribution is institution-to-institution rather than direct-to-consumer; specialist hubs recruit and support community spokes through scheduled video sessions, case consultations, and didactic content, with podcast and multimedia content used for top-of-funnel awareness.

The business model is grant- and donor-funded rather than commercial: services are not priced as fee-for-service healthcare, and the program has historically relied heavily on international development funding including USAID. The recent dissolution of USAID has exposed funding-concentration risk and is driving an active strategic pivot toward domestic ownership, national insurance integration in partner countries, and non-donor sustainability models. There are no equity funding rounds, no commercial pricing tiers, and no disclosed financials, consistent with a non-profit program embedded in a public state university rather than a venture-backed entity.

Name

project echo

Legal name

Project Echo, HSC (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes)

Website

https://unm.edu

Company type

Private

Founded year

2003

Operating status

Operating

Short description

Project ECHO is a non-profit UNM Health Sciences program that uses video-based telementoring to connect specialist teams with community healthcare providers in underserved areas worldwide for case consultation and continuing education.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Telementoring and healthcare knowledge-sharing services

NAICS

Educational Support Services (611710), Professional and Management Development Training (61143)

SIC

Services-Health Services (8000)

akta.pro primary industry

Virtual Specialty Care Programs (Payer-Sponsored) (HLALACAD)

akta.pro secondary industries

Home Health Remote Patient Monitoring & Virtual Nursing Providers (HLAFAEAN), Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus & Resilience Programming (BPADAEAK)

Keywords

• Telementoring healthcare
• Virtual medical education
• Community health training
• Telehealth capacity building
• Specialist knowledge sharing

Headquarters

HQ city

Albuquerque

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Grant Funding and Donor Support: Project ECHO historically relied heavily on donor funding and grant support, particularly from USAID and similar international development organizations. The dissolution of USAID has exposed the vulnerability of externally-driven funding models and has prompted advocacy for transitioning to domestic ownership and financing models.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels2 records

Core offering

Project ECHO operates a hub-and-spoke telementoring program that uses video conferencing to connect specialist teams at academic medical centers with community healthcare providers in underserved areas. It delivers ongoing mentoring, didactics, and case-based learning to build local healthcare workforce capacity. The model emphasizes knowledge sharing and continuing professional education rather than direct patient care or fee-for-service clinical delivery.

Product overview

Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a movement to democratize specialized medical knowledge. It operates as a telementoring platform that uses video conferencing to connect community providers with specialist teams at academic medical centers. The model enables ongoing case consultations, didactics, and peer learning across healthcare disciplines. Project ECHO operates as both an HSC department and a Main Campus department at UNM, with the Center for Telehealth serving as a related support function. The sources do not provide detailed information about specific product modules, pricing tiers, or technical architecture.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) A telementoring and knowledge-sharing program that connects healthcare providers in underserved communities with specialist teams at academic medical centers for ongoing mentoring, case consultations, didactics, and continuing education to improve healthcare outcomes.

Quantifiable outcome

• Builds resilient, autonomous healthcare systems capable of sustaining telehealth services without external donor funding

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature1 record

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered minor and core.

• Georgetown Journal of International AffairsminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerAcademic collaboration for publishing research on telehealth sustainability and the ECHO model's impact on healthcare systems in Sub-Saharan Africa following changes in international donor funding.
• National Health Systems (Sub-Saharan Africa)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerIntegration of telehealth services into national insurance schemes and domestic financing models to ensure long-term sustainability of healthcare programs.

Scale indicators1 record

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Doximity: Professional network for healthcare providers with telehealth and continuing education features. Comparable in serving healthcare provider education and connectivity, with overlapping audience of clinicians seeking specialty knowledge.
• HealthStream: Healthcare workforce development and training platform for hospitals and health systems. Comparable in workforce capacity building for healthcare providers, though focused on compliance and clinical training delivery.
• American Medical Association (AMA Ed Hub): Continuing medical education and professional development platform for physicians. Comparable in delivering ongoing professional education to healthcare providers, with similar mission of clinical knowledge dissemination.
• Maven Clinic: Virtual specialty care platform focused on family/maternal health with provider network. Comparable as a virtual specialty care program though commercial and condition-specific versus Project ECHO's broader telementoring model.

Broad incumbents

• Coursera: Online education platform with healthcare and medical training content from academic institutions. Comparable in the educational/training delivery mechanism for healthcare professionals, though broader in scope.
• Amwell: Enterprise telehealth platform serving health systems and insurers with virtual specialty and primary care. Comparable in virtual specialty care delivery, though commercial and provider-direct rather than community-capacity building.
• Doctor On Demand: Virtual care platform offering urgent care, behavioral health, and specialty consultations. Comparable as telehealth infrastructure, though delivers direct patient care rather than provider telementoring.
• Teladoc Health: Largest commercial telehealth platform offering virtual care across multiple specialties. Comparable as a virtual care delivery platform, though operates on a commercial fee-for-service model rather than provider telementoring.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks4 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• YouTubeyoutube.com/user/unmlive
• Xx.com/ProjectECHO
• Facebookfacebook.com/UNMProjectECHO

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about project echo