The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Research and Development (ORD) improves the lives of Veterans and all Americans through health care discovery and innovation. Current VA ORD strategic priorities include increasing Veterans' access to high-quality clinical trials; increasing the real-world impact of VA research; putting VA data to work for Veterans; actively promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion; and building community through VA research.

TITAN-AUXO supports the development and implementation of a fully integrated VA research enterprise architecture by providing strategic advisory, programmatic, and implementation support for 15 workstreams across the research enterprise. We provide strategic planning, research, and project management expertise to support programs related to artificial intelligence, enterprise-research system implementation, military exposures, infectious disease clinical trials and mortality studies and clinical trials, and the collection and analysis of biospecimens and Veterans’ health data.

We stood-up the National Artificial Intelligence Institute (NAII) to support VA’s goal of building robust capacity in artificial intelligence (AI) and establishing VA as the preeminent organization for research, development, and training of AI with impact on a global scale.

We provided critical program management, strategic planning, strategic communications and event support for a rapidly growing organization. With NAII guidance, we managed the planning and communications for VA NAII’s inaugural AI Summit Series event. We established the AI Summit Series brand and event logo and created outreach emails, key messages, audience lists, media advisory, press release, blog, speaker ppt deck, attendee and travel packages, social media toolkits, post-event survey, videos, watermarked photos, event management system communications, one-pagers, briefing deck, and signage. We helped the Summit accomplish the following: secure 500 registrants, 70+ speakers and 20+ industry exhibitors; create connections between VA, industry, academia, and non-VA government agencies; promote sharing of AI best practices, information, training, tools, interventions, and processes; increase awareness of current and potential health care AI applications; demonstrate that AI innovation is part of the VA infrastructure; and increase employee interest in creating and implementing innovations at their facilities. We are currently planning the second VA NAII AI Summit Series event, the International Summit for AI in Health Care, which will build on the success of the BRAIN Summit and explore the latest findings on how AI and ML are reshaping the future of health care.

We established the VAIRRS Support Team, a cross-functional group of subject matter experts resourced to support the Enterprise System implementation of the VA Innovation Research and Review System (VAIRRS). As a result, VAIRRS is now fully adopted by all 106 VA research programs with over 15,000 active users. To achieve this implementation goal, we performed an overhaul of the program’s collateral and conducted a thorough analysis of the available resources and the needs of end-users. Additionally, we commenced the pilot cohort of the successful VAIRRS Site Support Program which provided direct administrative and project management support to research programs. We achieved success across a large agency with methodical and impactful strategic planning, process improvement, administrative/operational support, robust dashboarding and data solutions, and improved training effectiveness through instructional design.

We brought expertise for administrative support and program implementation for the Military Exposure Research Program (MERP) stand-up. MERP is a new program that was l launched to advance military exposure assessment, understand the effects of military exposures on Veterans’ health outcomes, and inform VA healthcare and policy. We developed stakeholder briefings to create buy-in and understanding among VA leaders. We Iead the Initiation Phase of the program, which included administrative support, communications with core staff, updated briefing documents, working with MERIC POCs to integrate with MERP and other implementation activities as needed. For the PACT ACT we delivered project management and thought leadership as well as meeting facilitation and stakeholder management.