The Department of Veterans Affairs recently implemented a new AI strategy intended to guide the VA’s efforts to take optimal advantage of new technology in the service of the country’s veterans.
The plan is the agency’s first formally published AI strategy since the founding of the National Artificial Intelligence Institute (NAII) in June 2019.
“VA understands the significance of creating a balance between innovation, safety and trust,” said VA National Artificial Intelligence Institute Director Gil Alterovitz in an announcement. “To this end, VA leadership, practitioners and relevant end-users will be trained to ensure all AI-related activities and processes are ethical, legal and meet or exceed standards.”
In introducing the agency’s strategy, the plan notes that “(a)lthough every federal agency will need to prioritize AI, the VA is uniquely suited to leverage it for at least two reasons. First, the VA has the most comprehensive combined administrative, financial, and medical record databases globally, providing important data sets for the training and testing of AI capabilities for improving health outcomes for our Veterans. Second, the decentralized network of local VA facilities can unite end- users and researchers across the country with close links to academic institutions and innovative private-sector counterparts.”
In keeping with the mission of serving veterans and benefiting from VA’s unique data infrastructure, the strategy is designed to deliver on four major strategic objectives:
• Use existing AI capacities to better deliver health care and benefits to veterans by developing shared public datasets and environments for AI training and testing.
• Develop existing AI capacities by making long-term investments in AI and developing effective methods for AI-human collaboration.
• Increase veteran and stakeholder trust in AI by understanding and addressing the ethical, legal, and societal implications of AI.
• Build upon partnerships with industry and other government agencies.
“AI has the capability to transform how our Veterans access the critical care they need,” said National AI Initiative Office Director Lynne Parker, Ph. D., with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “VA’s new roadmap will help realize AI’s full potential building trust in future technology and creating more effective, efficient systems for patients.”
According to the plan, “Implementing this strategy will require an enterprise-wide catalog of existing AI solutions and proposed use cases. Use cases will be evaluated against existing solutions to identify potential impact, barriers to implementation, and anticipated return on investment. The success and potential impact of any given AI application will be measured across three key performance metrics: customer satisfaction, other measurable outcomes, and return on investment (ROI).”
The VA says development of the comprehensive AI strategy was designed in support of executive orders on AI and aligns with the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020 that launched the NAII.
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