The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) plans to roll out new general-use artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities aimed at reducing paperwork and manual processes, while increasing investments to help employees effectively adopt the technology, according to the agency’s acting chief AI officer.
“We will be rolling out some new general-use AI capabilities that I think are going to just fundamentally change how we work and how we deliver services to veterans,” VA acting Chief AI Officer Kimberly McManus said during a Sept. 2 GovCIO Media & Research event.
The agency is targeting internal, manual processes that take employees away from serving veterans, McManus said, while also putting greater emphasis on the workforce support needed to make those tools useful.
“We’ll also be investing more in the enablement and the customer success and the literacy components of that,” she said, calling those efforts a “top priority.”
McManus pointed to existing AI deployments as evidence of the technology’s potential to improve both veterans’ care and agency operations.
For example, she said VA uses clinical decision-support systems to identify veterans who may be at risk of suicide or opioid overdose. Its opioid overdose tool is associated with a 22% decrease in mortality, McManus said.
VA has also found that an AI-assisted colonoscopy tool increased detection of precancerous growths by 21%, according to McManus. Another system designed to flag potentially fraudulent direct deposit changes has identified more than 1,000 potential incidents and saved “a few million dollars,” she said.
The agency’s use of AI tools to reduce administrative work has seen gains as well. An agency study found employees using general-purpose AI tools saved about six hours per week. Eighty percent of users reported improvements in both job satisfaction and their ability to devote more time to veterans, McManus said.
One of those tools is ambient dictation technology, which is available to more than 11,000 healthcare providers. McManus said it “allows our healthcare providers to spend more time engaging with veterans and less time on paperwork.”
As VA expands AI tools across its workforce of more than 400,000 employees, McManus said AI literacy will need to include both broad training on how employees can use AI in their jobs and more tailored instruction for individual applications.
“As we deploy new tools, ensuring that we’re pairing them with the right training is the core thing there,” the acting chief AI officer said. “I think it’s both on how to use tools safely and also how to use them efficiently and effectively.”
McManus added that VA will continue looking to commercial technology as its AI strategy evolves.
“We’re going to see investment in continuing to kind of redesign how we think about work,” she said, adding, “It’s a really exciting time.”