VA Seeking Analytics Tools to Enhance Veteran Care

by Tomas O’Keefe, Senior Analyst

Some recent developments suggest that the Department of Veterans Affairs is starting to get organized and introducing more advanced analytics capabilities into its environment.

One of the new tools being introduced into the VA environment is a program called Joint Legacy Viewer, nicknamed Janus. Janus is going to give VA employees a significantly better ability to view medical information from the Defense Health Agency in a single screen. Additional capability will be added to the program to provide the ability for clinicians to order medication and other necessities based on the information on the screen. As more and more medical information is available via Janus, the VA will turn towards analytics to predict care for particular populations of veterans.

The VA is also looking to develop a toolkit that would improve its HealtheLiving Assessment survey, which collects information from veterans to create a baseline for future treatment. The expansion of the HealtheLiving Assessment will aid medical professionals in charting treatment options for various illnesses affecting veteran populations. The VA wants to develop a decision support technology platform with a set of core clinical features needed for building out the online risk assessment questionnaire. Work on the toolkit would allow VA doctors to develop more sophisticated models to predict which type of care will be required and evaluate risk.

With the VA now taking action to develop tools to assist in care, vendors who can provide analytics tools should reach out to the department to assist VA officials during this critical time. There’s been a lot of scrutiny on the VA recently, but if you provide tools that can better manage the vast swath of data on VA medical systems, help predict treatment options depending on symptoms, and project risk associated with types of healthcare, there is no better time to reach out.