COVID-19

The Veterans Benefits Administration overcomes pandemic challenges with advances in GI Bill benefits, mail processing and artificial intelligence.

Senate and House VA leads are working together to tackle veterans mental health care, vaccinations and more.

The Veterans Health Administration has vaccinated 2 million veterans with at least the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and is working with veterans of color to bridge vaccination disparities as the agency pushes forward with its COVID-19 response.

The U.S. public has leaned into the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services heavily for health care support this past year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and in turn CMS has leaned into data to provide better aid back to the people it serves.

The General Services Administration has received $1 billion for the Technology Modernization Fund from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that President Biden signed into law last week.

The Department of Veterans Affairs' vaccination roll out is well underway, and Secretary Denis McDonough said the recent passage of the American Rescue Plan will only accelerate the process while providing additional emergency aid to retired service members.

The pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate medical research has encouraged data sharing and consolidation of practices across federal agencies to lay the groundwork for increasingly sophisticated applications of AI toward diagnostic and health care.

Clare Martorana has been appointed the next federal CIO and administrator of the Office of Electronic Government at the Office of Management and Budget, according to a White House announcement.

Federal health IT leaders are focusing on data, security, emerging technologies and human-centered design as some of their top priorities in the near term.

Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package includes $10 billion for IT modernization and cybersecurity needs at federal agencies.

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The VA Office of Connected Care has worked to boost capabilities in remote counseling for veterans.

Federal health data officials called to view health information interoperability as a journey to be developed with end users and iterated over time rather than a major destination to reach all at once during last week’s Academy Health Datapalooza virtual conference.