DoD/VA and Gov Health IT Summit 2024: Enhancing Patient Care; Supporting At-Risk Veterans; and Deploying the Federal EHR
When it comes to federal health IT, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) both have a critical mission to deliver quality care for Veterans and active-duty service members, and their families.
Each year the DoD/VA and Gov Health IT Summit offers a “town-hall style” gathering that allows senior government health leaders to share their recent efforts and future strategies to advance innovative health information technologies.
This year’s theme was “enabling patient-centered care through innovative health IT.” Miah Edwards, Business Development Capture Analyst at Makpar, attended the event and came back with many key learnings worthy sharing.
For example, key focus areas of the event were around delivering world-class care to the Veteran community through innovation and key partnerships with industry. Advancing military readiness, digital transformation, patient care and access, and deploying the Federal EHR were also discussed.
Following are more details:
Leveraging Emerging Tech to Enhance Patient Care and Access: Federal agencies and industry are using advanced innovation to revolutionize healthcare, patient care, and health service delivery. AI, ML, healthcare applications and visualization/virtual reality capabilities are top-of-mind. However, these innovations come with data privacy, security and integration challenges that can be addressed through industry collaboration.
Lisa Rosenmerkel, Acting Chief Data Officer at the VA; and Long T. Pham, Chief, Health Technology & Innovation Liaison Office at DHA, were panelists.
Supporting At-Risk Veterans by Providing Mental Health Resources: The VA is launching new resources to address Veteran suicides by leveraging new innovations that address prevention, intervention, and postvention.
This discussion was hosted by Dr. Susan Kirsh, SES, Deputy Assistant Under Secretary for Health for DEAN VA.
Deploying the Federal EHR to Ensure Interoperability and Responsiveness: The VA and DoD are driving a Federal EHR deployment that aims to enhance patient care, and provider effectiveness. The goal is to unify efforts and common capabilities that enable the VA, DoD, and federal agencies to implement this EHR – with support from industry.
Lance Scott, Chief Technology Officer, FEHRM; and Clifford Wilborn, Director, Joint Sharing Sites and Lovell FHCC, FEHRM, were participating panelists.
In terms of other general topic from the event, Human-Centered Design (HCD) and customer experience (CX) were also top of mind. Both the DoD and the VA are emphasizing HCD and CX to develop solutions that prioritize people, by putting customers first through managing their journeys and serving their needs.
The VA is also looking to enhance its Veterans Health Administration Innovation Ecosystem (VHA IE) by supporting the entire lifecycle of innovation, from discovery through delivery. Much of this will be achieved by more proactively working with industry and by being more responsive to Responses for Information (RFIs).
Key discussions also centered around enhancing interoperability across all DoD and VA departments to enhance data integration. The VA is also prioritizing autonomous, virtual and augmented patient care to enhance remote healthcare services and improve overall patient outcomes.
Based on the topics discussed by senior government leadership at the DoD/VA and Gov Health IT Summit 2024, innovation will continue to be the driving force for achieving mission success through enhancing patient outcomes.
If you would like to learn more about how Makpar can help your health IT agency develop the most comprehensive innovation for enhancing mission success, please contact us here.