Pathfinder: Opportunities to improve health care delivery for Veterans

Innovation Heroes is a recurring series from the VA Innovation Ecosystem, focusing on VA employees who are driving innovation forward and improving the lives of Veterans and fellow VA employees.

Pathfinder is a website and digital tool designed to help external innovators, vendors and VA employees connect with tailored opportunities to improve health care delivery for Veterans. Launched in June 2022, Pathfinder is an evolving collaboration between a team of experts led by VA Entrepreneur in Residence Fellow Stacey Lewis.

VA seeks to understand the current state of health care innovation to ensure the best solutions are brought into VA. When an employee has an idea to improve Veteran health care, they may not know where to go. Pathfinder provides a guided process to connect employees with the Office of Healthcare Innovation and Learning to further that idea through programs like Innovators Network or Diffusion of Excellence.

Innovative ideas can come from outside VA. Pathfinder provides a way for companies or outside innovators to propose their idea to VA. VA can then perform research and determine if the idea can become a solution that improves Veteran health care.

Under Lewis’ leadership and expertise, Pathfinder is poised to transform the way businesses innovate and sell within the VA health care system.

“To me, Pathfinder offers an innovative solution to a huge challenge we’re all trying to solve… fair and equitable access to the VA network and resources,” Lewis said. “Our work centers around defining the art of what’s possible inside of VA, believing if we align our processes across offices in a thoughtful and transparent way, we can achieve great things together.”

Innovation takes root in New England

Lewis has been with VA for over 10 years and began her journey as a radiologic technologist before transitioning to a systems redesign program analyst at Maine VA. She honed her skills in performance improvement, measurement, management and strategic planning, and was also instrumental in shaping quality management efforts across VISN 1.

Her journey with innovation began in 2021 when VISN 1 was selected by the VA Innovation Ecosystem to stand up the first VISN-level National Center for Innovation to Impact which would be named the New England Center for Innovation Excellence.

Lewis was introduced to Pathfinder after being brought on to design and document processes that are measurable, effective and replicable.

Pathfinder as the front door to innovation at VA

After being selected as a 2023 Entrepreneur in Residence Fellow, Lewis began leveraging her skills in process design and improvement to enhance the Pathfinder experience, bring in more submissions and to ensure that submissions were getting in front of the right people at the right time.

Pathfinder connects the external community with the tools, resources and opportunities available within VA as well as access to solution-specific feedback from VA staff and leadership. By helping users understand the wide variety of innovation-centered experiences offered by VA, Pathfinder is fostering a culture of innovation while also opening VA’s front doors to new products and services.  

“For external innovators and those looking to sell to VA, Pathfinder provides an opportunity to collaborate with VA at any stage of the innovation lifecycle. The concierge-like process takes the submitter on a personalized journey based on their specific engagement goals,” Lewis said. “It has become and will continue to mature into a streamlined and transparent process that adds value at every step of the process for all those engaged in using the tool.”

Pathfinder fosters a culture of innovation in VA

Pathfinder supports innovation no matter what stage of development the idea is in. From ideation to collecting user feedback on a design or prototype, Pathfinder offers feedback and access to the Greenhouse Initiative. If the idea is more developed and ready to sell to VA, Pathfinder offers a vendor track to connect submitters to resources for consideration.

There is also a dedicated space for those who do not have an idea yet, but still want to engage in innovation. By joining the innovation community, including subscribing to the VHA IE Weekly Newsletter, submitters can stay up to date on how Pathfinder is evolving.

If you have a novel idea about improving Veteran health, check out the Pathfinder website to see what resources and opportunities the digital concierge will find for you.