VA chooses finalists in AI Tech Sprint $1M to reduce health care worker burnout

WASHINGTON — Today, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced the top performing teams selected to move forward in VA’s Artificial Intelligence Tech Sprint competition targeting the development of AI solutions to address burnout among health care workers.

The 25 finalists — listed below — will now prepare their designs for a panel of judges to determine what portion of up to $1 million in collective prize money each finalist will receive at a Golden Envelope Ceremony in May. The winning solutions will help clinicians take notes during medical appointments and/or integrate patients’ medical records.

VA’s health care professionals provide lifesaving and life-changing care for Veterans every day. Reducing burnout among health care workers is a top priority for VA, especially at a time when VA is delivering more care and more benefits to more Veterans than ever before. The Tech Sprint is a part of President Biden’s new executive order on safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence and VA’s efforts to use trustworthy AI solutions to improve health care and benefits for Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors.

“As we deliver more care to Veterans than ever before, our AI Tech Sprints are tackling an important challenge: health care worker burnout,” said Under Secretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal, M.D. “We’re leveraging our expertise in health care with the ingenuity of private sector — and we will drive real results for Veterans and improve the work environment for our employees. And at every turn, we will adhere to President Biden’s Trustworthy AI principles.”

The competition is designed to reduce the immense administrative workload of health care workers, which is frequently cited as a top cause for burnout. There are two tracks of this sprint:

• The Ambient Dictation for Clinical Encounters track focuses on speech-to-text solutions that can be used to automatically take notes for both the doctor and their patient and upload key excerpts to medical files. The finalists for this track are Abridge; Althea Health; ARETUM, LLC; Cognosante Military and Veterans Health (MVH), LLC; Commure, Inc; Contrast AI; Credence Management Solutions LLC; DeepScribe; Juan T. Garcia (TranscribeMD AI); Knowtex Inc.; Nuance; QuantumTechIT; Sourceree; Tali AI; and Veterans EZ Info Inc.
• The Community Care Document Processing track looks for an AI tool that can reduce the time needed to integrate non-VA medical records into patients’ VA records in an easy to access way. The finalists for this track are Abstractive Health; Booz Allen Hamilton; Commure, Inc.; Healow, LLC and eClinicalWorks, LLC; Instabase; Joint Venture iCatalyst Inc. and Semiring Inc.; Juan T. Garcia (TranscribeMD AI); Palantir Technologies Inc.; Wellovate LLC; and Wired Informatics.

After the Tech Sprint launched Oct. 31, 2023, VA received more than 200 applications, which were scored by set criteria, resulting in 100 teams from diverse backgrounds being selected for the next phase. Sixty participants then advanced to an output challenge. After weeks of putting their AI programs to the test, these finalists have been selected for each AI Tech Sprint.

For more information visit VA AI Tech Sprint.