The Veterans Health Administration (VHA), a sub-cabinet level agency within the Department of Veterans Affairs, is the largest integrated health care system in the United States serving 9 million enrolled Veterans each year.

From smart tools to reduce Veteran wait times for appointments to an efficient disability claims mechanism, identifying Veterans at high risk for suicide as well as those at high risk of hospitalization, VA has been on the forefront of harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to improve Veterans’ health care.

In 2019, the VA launched the National Artificial Intelligence Institute (NAII) with an aim to “advancing AI research and development for real-world impact and outcomes to ensure Veteran health and well-being.”

Leveraging AI 

As a leap-frog technology, today AI is being integrated across all sectors of economy and society including healthcare to advance medical treatment and patient experiences in order to improve health systems and make these more efficient.

From more precise diagnoses to drug discovery, AI/ML and related advances are becoming more widely used in healthcare including administrative processes. By using administrative and electronic health record data, VA researchers are leveraging AI to identify Veterans at high risk of hospitalization or death besides seeking support of algorithms in high-stakes decisions during heart surgery. Everyday many more avenues are being explored with the help of AI-enabled technologies.

Accelerating AI with data

With over 10 billion medical images, VA’s Veterans Health Information System Technology Architecture (VistA) Imaging System is one of the world’s largest medical image repositories. Many AI/ML applications involve large amounts of data and with the rise in healthcare data these technologies could prove to be the real game-changers. This ever-increasing database has unprecedented opportunities to offer in the use of AI/ML technologies in healthcare. The VA AI strategy launched in July last year also aims to tap into the full capabilities of AI across all initiatives of the Department to deliver exceptionally good care to Veterans and the American people.