Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki has announced the selection of 26 winning ideas in the
Veterans Health Administration / Office of Information and Technology (VHA/OIT) Innovation Competition.
The VHA/OIT is the most recent effort under the VA Innovation Initiative, a department-wide program bringing together employees and the private sector to find solutions to the VA’s most important challenges. The VHA/OIT Innovation Competition specifically solicited health care IT solutions with the potential to transform VA health care service in the next century.
Over 6,500 ideas from different department employees were submitted, with 26 winners representing 23 different VA medical providers from 17 states. After a Web-based community voting method narrowed the submissions to a smaller group of finalists, a panel of federal and private sector health care and IT leaders reviewed the top proposals and selected the winners. The VHA/OIT Innovation Competition Winning Innovations:- Reducing health care associated infections using informatics
- CPRS-based automated queries & reports
- Robust VA forms search engine
- Augment CPRS with standards-based decision support engine
- Enhanced care management to facilitate case management and chronic disease care
- Integration of behavioral health lab & CPRS for mental health primary care
- Edischarge pilot program
- Show patient picture in CPRS
- CPRS enhancement for veteran-centered care
- "Parking" outpatient prescriptions to prevent waste
- Suicide hotline: be a hero, save a hero
- Touch screen device support for nursing triage of patients
- Tools for front line veteran eligibility staffing
- VA-wide core collection of knowledge based information resources
- Integrate VistA surgery package with CPRS
- Illustrated medication instructions for veterans
- Share verified insurance info via use of the master patient index
- Veteran online tracking of mail prescription delivery
- Search function in CPRS
- Accessible contact information for all assigned care providers
- Online radiology protocoling tool integrated within CPRS/VistA
- Wireless voice communications with hands free options
- Improved access to military personnel records
- Brief resident supervision index
- Emergency medical response team communication
- Reduce unnecessary/duplicate lab tests by rules-based algorithms
