For decades, innovation has fueled VA’s mission to deliver exceptional health care to Veterans. Early inventions, like the cardiac pacemaker, and recent innovations, like the radiotherapy bolus that helps protect cancer patients’ healthy tissue during treatment, serve as a testament to VA’s dedication to delivering high-quality health care.
Since 2019, VHA’s Office of Healthcare Innovation and Learning has published an annual report, the State of Innovation Report, that highlights notable VA innovations that are advancing the care delivery and experiences for Veterans.
The 2024 SOI Report is now available online, demonstrating VA’s leadership in health care innovation and ensuring that Veterans are informed about the latest advancements we have to offer.
Promise to Progress: Evolving Veteran health care
The theme of this year’s report is “From Promise to Progress: Evolving Veteran Health Care.” The report contains 25 feature stories across four core sections. Each section of the report calls attention to the innovative programs and products that support the advancement of Veteran care.
The first section, titled “Expanding Our Reach: Access to Care and Services,” features innovations such as VA’s Technology Enabled Respite Homecare Model, which allows eligible Veterans a choice in selecting who provides their approved homecare hours while providing primary caregivers much needed relief. Another innovation in this section is the 3D-Printed Naloxone Trainer, which is a hands-on training tool that gives individuals the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the life-saving process of administering naloxone, potentially reducing hesitation and saving lives.
The next section of the report, titled “Helping Veterans Thrive: Resilience through Mental Health,” begins with a feature on VA’s Mission Daybreak, which launched in 2022 as a $20 million grand challenge designed to help VA develop new suicide prevention strategies for Veterans. The article features impactful stories from some of Mission Daybreak’s 40 awardees, such as ReflexAI and Televeda.
The third section, titled “Delivering More Together: Collaboration is the New Competition,” highlights how VA is collaborating with academia, non-profits, industry and other government agencies to advance its mission of delivering care to Veterans. One story in this section on the Defibrillator Simulator highlights how a VA provider collaborated with the University of Florida and the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation to deliver a sophisticated simulated training tool to help advanced cardiac life support providers build and maintain confidence in using defibrillators.
The final section, called “Health Care on the Horizon: Advancements in Care,” includes innovations like SimLEARN’s SimVET Analysis, which evaluates emerging health technologies before they reach the hands of VA employees providing care to Veterans.
Connecting Veterans to solutions
To help connect Veterans to these innovations, the report’s Index of Innovative Care lists the 25 innovations and gives Veteran readers a better understanding of the scale of the program, where it may be available and where to find more information online. The Index also encourages Veterans to learn more and apply for VA health care.
Nearly every existing VA medical center supports these programs in some way. The goal of the report is to inform Veterans and give those who are eligible a clear path to take advantage of these featured services.
You can read the full 2024 State of Innovation Report to learn more about these innovations and the VA employees who brought them to life. Eligible Veterans are encouraged to talk with their VA care teams to connect with the programs and products that are relevant to their health care journeys, where available.
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Great progress. Is there a better way to disseminate this information directly to vets and alike ? My health care staff never informed me of these, as this initiative, and feedback from vets and alike.
I see this Government will hand out Millions of Dollars to other Countries, While the Family Members who are left behind after their Spouse passes away from what ever they are exposed to overseas. WE GET DIC, OH THATS A BIG HELP. Most families are left without their loved ones, We don’t get taken care of. There us no help for The Families of the Fallen Services Men and Women. We Decided to Remarry WE LOSE EVERYTHING, THIS MESSAGE has to e made known, We sacrifice Our Lives just as much as Each Services Member. They come back unable to function in the World, Due to PTSD, We pay the price. The Families are becoming Collateral Damage.
VA health care sucks.
Reposting because as expected part of evolving health care is to remove comments when it doesnt match the narrative.
The theme “From Promise to Progress: Evolving Veteran Health Care” is definitely evolving. How the VA is evolving and providing world class health care is by kicking veterans to the curb if management deems services have been utilized for too long, making “jokes” about veterans in the middle of compromising procedures, write up patients for vocalizing a complaint (this way the VA can deny any and all care), have it so the subject of a complaint also adjudicates the complaint (no conflict of interest here) and more.
Keep the evolution going. Numerous people feel better already.
[Editor: When you double post, our automated spam filter moves BOTH comments to spam. I’ve retrieved them and published them.]
The theme “From Promise to Progress: Evolving Veteran Health Care” is definitely evolving. How the VA is evolving and providing world class health care is by kicking veterans to the curb if management deems the services to be utilized for too long, making “jokes” about veterans in the middle of compromising procedures, write the patient up for vocalizing a complaint (this way the VA can deny any and all care), have it so the subject of a complaint also adjudicates the complaint (no conflict of interest here), and more.
Keep the evolution going. Numerous people feel better already.
A real “innovation” in transparency the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) should pursue is allowing the veteran to have on line access to our real time read only PDF format C-File just as we have for medical records from the VHA. It would be an absolutely easy task for Veterans Affairs IT programmers to accomplish, but knowing the VBA’s love of secrecy for the purpose of denying claims, this is a pipe dream. I see a comment below that reads “PDF is not 508 compliant”. What does this mean as under Title 38 Part 1 there is no §508. Could you explain and squash my doubt?
[Editor: Section 508 refers to accessibility: https://www.section508.gov/ ]
The PDF is not 508 compliant.
Great could not wait to read the improvements to our service and aid.