In an effort to centralize and advance its artificial intelligence research and development capabilities, the Department of Veterans Affairs has announced the establishment of the National Artificial Intelligence Institute (NAII), a joint initiative by the Office of Research and Development and the Office of the Secretary's Center for Strategic Partnerships.

“VA has a unique opportunity to be a leader in artificial intelligence,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie in a written statement. “VA’s artificial intelligence institute will usher in new capabilities and opportunities that will improve health outcomes for our nation’s heroes.”

The institute will work to “prioritize and realize” AI research and development programs, including existing projects such an effort to use AI to reduce veterans’ wait times for health appointments, as well as, in another project, to scan veteran medical records to evaluate their suicide risk as part of the REACH VET program.

On a broader level the Institute will solicit, develop and execute flagship AI research and development projects—with veteran input—focusing on deep learning, explainable AI, privacy-preserving AI as well as AI for multi-scale time series.

Among the resources the NAII will tap is the VA’s Million Veteran Program, which the agency says is the world’s largest genomic knowledge base linked to healthcare information being designed to link genetic, clinical, lifestyle and military-exposure data to better understand their impact on the health condition of veterans.

“Even while the NAII helps VA build toward AI advances, VA researchers have already been tackling projects that use the technology,” according to the agency. “One of the first tasks the NAII took on was surveying the existing use of AI by VA researchers. For VA studies already underway in a few AI specialty areas, the NAII will examine options for helping them achieve their research goals, find new resources and forge collaborations.”

The institute will be led by the VA’s director of AI, Gil Alterovitz, who was appointed in July and has led national and international collaborative initiatives for developing novel informatics methods and approaches for integrating clinical, pharmaceutical and genomic information, from research to point-of-care.