USAID Cuts Would Hurt Finette’s ThinkMD, Other Vt. Companies, Seven Days Reports
The Trump administration’s sweeping cutbacks to the $40 billion international development agency USAID, which delivers humanitarian aid to dozens of countries around the world, dealt a swift blow to many Vermont nonprofits, companies, and workers, Seven Days reports. After all, Vermont nonprofits help coordinate those efforts and run projects overseas.
Among the for-profit companies that would be affected by President Donald Trump’s proposed shutdown of USAID is ThinkMD, a Burlington-based medical software startup cofounded in 2014 by Larner Professor of Pediatrics Barry Finette, Ph.D., M.D.
In 2023, ThinkMD received $1.5 million from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures to support a study in Nigeria of technology meant to enable nonphysicians to evaluate patients in settings where trained practitioners aren’t available, Finette said. “The study had ramifications globally, and there are three to four years of work that people put into this grant that has now gone by the wayside.” He said two ThinkMD contractors in Vermont will lose their jobs.