The Department of Veterans Affairs launched a discover of intent to challenge sole supply contracts for a synthetic intelligence-enabled healthcare dictation device late final week.
On behalf of the Veterans Health Administration, the VA’s Strategic Acquisition Center introduced that it plans to award non-competitive, fixed-price contracts to Abridge AI, Inc. and Nuance Communications, Inc., two AI platform suppliers for the healthcare trade, based on the discover. The two distributors will conduct cloud-based, ambient scribe pilots that use AI to transcribe scientific encounters and generate notes in medical settings.
The anticipated sole-source awards are the results of the companies profitable the primary monitor of the VA’s AI Tech Sprint, which targeted on producing transcriptions from ambient recordings of affected person encounters inside specialty care, psychological well being care and first care settings, based on the company’s website.
Through the discover, the VA can be soliciting suggestions from different events that imagine they might meet the wants of the contracts.
The VA was tasked in President Biden’s October AI government order with operating two tech sprints. In addition to the primary monitor, the company held a second tech sprint in search of an AI system to course of paperwork generated in patient-provider encounters and different advanced medical paperwork for “rising continuity of care for veterans” and sharing “key factors” with VA suppliers, the company stated.
The pilot program will combine with the VA’s digital well being file modernization program and workflows, the discover states. Providers will have the ability to begin recording with out the guide entry of a affected person’s figuring out info, and draft notes could be mechanically inserted into the EHR with out manually copying and pasting.
Charles Worthington, the chief AI and expertise officer for the VA, stated in a latest interview with FedScoop that the company has an inventory of high-priority AI use circumstances that it’s “actually leaning into,” together with the tech sprints.
“I really feel like proper now, we’re in that awkward stage the place most of those instruments are a special window … the place there’s quite a lot of flipping forwards and backwards between instruments and determining how finest to combine these AI instruments with the extra conventional programs,” Worthington stated within the interview. “I feel that’s simply form of a comparatively unfigured-out downside. Especially, if you happen to consider a spot like VA, the place we’ve quite a lot of legacy programs, issues which have been constructed over the previous variety of a long time, oftentimes updating these just isn’t the simplest factor.”
In the identical interview, Worthington stated that the VA’s technical infrastructure was on “fairly good footing” — regardless of the specter of funding reductions from Congress for fiscal 2025. That potential for forthcoming fiscal challenges comes after the VA has confronted bother on Capitol Hill concerning considerations with modernization upgrades, an absence of AI-related disclosures and insufficient tech contractor sanctions, and constant scrutiny of the division’s Oracle Cerner-developed EHR, which has simply seen a contract extension.
Written by Caroline Nihill
Caroline Nihill is a reporter for FedScoop in Washington, D.C., protecting federal IT. Her reporting has included the monitoring of synthetic intelligence governance from the White House and Congress, in addition to modernization efforts throughout the federal authorities. Caroline was beforehand an editorial fellow for Scoop News Group, writing for FedScoop, StateScoop, CyberScoop, EdScoop and ProtectionScoop. She earned her bachelor’s in media and journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after transferring from the University of Mississippi.
https://fedscoop.com/va-awards-ai-tech-sprint-winners-pilot-contracts-for-ambient-medical-transcription-services/
