VA to Roll Out Ambient Listening Pilots at 10 Facilities by Year End

The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to launch the first pilots of its ambient listening program at 10 facilities nationwide by the end of this year, officials confirmed during a Subcommittee on Technology Modernization oversight hearing Monday. The pilots will test the use artificial intelligence to capture and synthesize conversations between clinicians and patients, reducing the time clinicians spend reviewing and writing notes.

“We have established a series of criteria and evaluation as we roll this out that’s focused on user acceptance testing, veterans’ perceptions of the tool as it’s used in their ongoing trust in the care they receive, and just overall performance of the tool,” Dr. Evan Carey, acting director of the National Artificial Intelligence Institute, told congressional leaders this week. “We are measuring clinician burden and getting clinician feedback, both synchronously and through survey mechanisms to understand the impacts.”

Charles Worthington, the agency’s chief technology and AI officer, told congressional leaders the VA’s AI strategy revolves around “providing faster services, higher quality care and more cost-effective operations.”

He said the agency has five key priorities driving its strategy: expanding AI access across VA’s workforce; reimagining high-impact workflows through AI and automation; prioritizing investment in data and infrastructure to support high-potential use cases; cultivating an AI-ready workforce; building a transparent and effective governance structure.

Expanding VA AI Use Cases

The VA reported 227 use cases in its AI inventory in 2024, nearly 100 more than the previous year, Worthington highlighted. He said he expects that updates in December 2025 will eclipse 2024’s showing.

Dr. Mohammad Ghassemi, assistant professor at Michigan State University, told lawmakers that “disciplined pilots, clear metrics and safeguards for safety, equity and privacy” will help AI “return time from paperwork to patients, ensure that critical findings are not missed and support clinicians in their hardest decisions.”

Partnering with Industry to Advance AI

Sid Ghatak, chief technical advisor at the National Artificial Intelligence Association, said government and industry must work together on practical AI applications and likened AI’s surge to the development of the steam engine.

“Until steam engines were used to create the first railroads, no human had ever traveled faster than a horse. This new form of transportation opened the world eyes to what is possible, just as ChatGPT has shown the world the art of the possible with artificial intelligence,” Ghatak said. “But early train travel was dangerously unreliable … the lesson is clear: revolutionary technologies will evolve and improve over time when the private sector and government work in collaboration.”

Guiding Future AI Development with Robust Standards

Worthington said VA’s AI implementation standards are robust, and AI systems receive authority to operate before gaining access to veteran data.

“There’s not a second set of rules for AI systems in the VA. We have a very clear and stringent set of rules around both security and privacy for any technology system,” Worthington said during the hearing. “AI systems receive an authority to operate just like any other system would before we would put veteran data into the system.”

Worthington said VA is standardizing AI adoption across the agency to reduce duplicative products and processes.

“Once we commit, we don’t want to have every medical center buying its own version of the same product, and so we’ve got a pretty careful balance of that innovation,” Worthington said. “We are doing structured pilots to help us decide what to purchase and what to deploy to the enterprise.”