5 Takeaways from HIMSS 2024

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated health care system in the U.S., with more than 1,300 facilities handling information from millions of veterans. Under Secretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal said that VHA is partnering with small businesses, entrepreneurs and community-based organizations to expand care.

“When we collaborate with innovators, early-stage companies and with community-based organizations that focus on veterans that already have the trust of the veterans in their communities, the opportunities are boundless,” Elnahal said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology executing the Public Health Data Strategy met nearly 15 milestones over the past year. Office Director Dr. Jennifer Layden touted progress in electronic case reporting, where there are more than 30,000 health facilities data directly to public health agencies across the United States. She told GovCIO Media & Research that public health modernization is ultimately about patient care.

“A big theme for us is to plug public health into health care,” she said. “I’m looking forward to this incredible team that we are building, continuing to accelerate the progress in emphasizing …the possibility of public health truly being plugged into healthcare.”

Artificial intelligence was a major theme of the conference. In a conversation with GovCIO Media & Research, Department of Health and Human Services Chief AI Officer Greg Singleton said that his agency is working to develop and deploy AI technologies, prioritizing responsible and safe use of the technology. Singleton said that he sees AI making the most impact on clinical outcomes, empowering patients and reducing clinician burnout.

“We have these new technologies, we have these new tools because we deploy them in ways that pay, provide advancements,” he said. “We are competent and are able to trust them as a people that they represent our American values.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health’s (ARPA-H) mission is to make pivotal investments in the next generation of health. Created in 2022, ARPA-H is fulfilling its mission on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic that changed the trajectory for federal technology and data programs.

During a panel at HIMSS, ARPA-H Deputy Director Susan Monarez said that she wants hopeful applicants vying for funding to treat it like any other venture capitalist from the private sector.

“Do your due diligence that you would do if you were pitching to a [venture capitalist] — because that’s what we do,” Monarez said. “We function much more like the VC community than we do a traditional funding agency.”

Public and private health care organizations have vast amounts of data that cyber criminals are constantly trying to steal. To defend against these incursions, everyone needs to work together to enhance the cybersecurity of the entire interconnected set of systems that service health organizations, Human Services CISO and Acting Deputy CIO La Monte Yarborough said.

“You can’t do this on an island, you can’t do this independently, you have to rely on the ability to share intelligence as things come about within the cyber arena right now,” Yarborough told GovCIO Media & Research. “You have to be able to exchange information, you have to be willing and able to collaborate, because a lot of things that occur within this space can be time sensitive.”