VHA Innovation Experience

What is the VHA Innovation Experience (iEX)?


The iEX annual conference offers health care professionals from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), other government agencies, industry, and academia the opportunity to celebrate, collaborate, and promote a culture of innovation. This year, VHA iEX showcased both employee-developed and industry-sourced innovations and practices that inspired and informed lively discussion via the conference platform. Participants had the opportunity to engage with presenters via live chat and in virtual exhibit booths.

Innovation Experience 2020 Recap


2020 featured an exciting list of presenters and topics.

Session Highlights

Embracing Disruptive Innovation in Health Care Dr. Ken Kizer and Mr. Dean Kamen discussed how to create a safe environment for innovation in health care and shared their experiences institutionalizing integrated, systematic, repeatable pathways for change. It also featured Kamen’s demonstration of the iBOT.

Enabling an Innovative Workforce Panelists from the Office of Personnel Management, MIT, Innosight, and the Design Institute for Health discussed how workforce development and skill building advancing innovation in healthcare, both in VHA and the medical community writ large.



Optimizing Partnerships Featuring exciting panelists from UnitedHealth, Microsoft, American Veterans, and the American Hospital Association, this panel discussed how to build collaboration for health care delivery.

Keynote Address Dr. Toby Redshaw, the Senior Vice President for Enterprise Innovation and 5G Solutions at Verizon, shared share the value of partnering with startups, academia, and enterprise teams to rethink what is possible in a 5G world. His address highlighted how VHA Innovation Ecosystem has worked with Verizon, Microsoft and Medivis to implement Project CONVERGENCE.

Publications

VHA State of Innovation Report 2020

VHA has long embraced innovation, from the first implantable cardiac pacemaker in 1960 to the recent exploration of clinical virtual reality (VR) applications and 3D bioprinting to fabricate patient-matched, vascularized living bone. Through this report, you will learn about innovation across VHA today, and the exciting ways gamechangers are adapting to meet current and future challenges patients and their health care providers may face. We invite you to celebrate the work our innovators have accomplished, especially their agility and commitment in combatting COVID-19. We invite you to think about what else is possible when we have the courage to learn quickly, fail quickly, and apply lessons learned to move forward quickly.