Changing Lives, Saving Lives
VHA Innovation Ecosystem (VHA IE) is the catalyst for enabling the discovery and spread of
mission-driven health care innovation to advance care delivery and service that exceeds
expectations, restores hope, and builds trust within the Veteran community.
As part of the VHA Office of Discovery, Education and Affiliate Networks (DEAN), VHA IE
leverages the collective power of innovation champions from across VA, academia, non-profit
and industry to operationalize innovation in the nation’s largest integrated health care
system
Establishing a Foundation for Innovation
VHA IE delivers four critical elements needed to create a foundation for operationalizing innovation in a health care setting
Workforce Capacity to Actualize Innovation:
Investing in VHA employees to give them the tools and skillsets needed to bring innovative
ideas to fruition
Resilient Organizational Infrastructure:
Institutionalizing innovation through integrated, systematic, repeatable pathways for change
Innovation-Nurturing Culture:
Shifting the mindset to envision innovation as everyone’s responsibility to improve service
delivery and create a better new normal
Strategic External Collaborations:
Innovation cannot be realized in
isolation and requires novel, cross-industry collaborations that surface novel ideas and
help catalyze a shift in the status-quo
Delivering Innovation
VHA IE delivers innovative solutions today through four core portfolios
Facilitates a culture of innovation through a network of 33 VA Medical Centers with embedded Innovation Specialists who are focused on empowering frontline VHA employees and their ideas and building the workforce of the future
Identifies, tests, and diffuses innovative, Promising Practices across VHA through a repeatable process for scaling innovation
Aims to foster collaboration between both internal and external organizations and select, local VA Medical Centers to address VHA’s most pressing health care challenges.