Industry Innovation Competitions
The Industry Innovation Competitions are designed to give VA the opportunity to get the best thinking from the private sector to solve the Department's most pressing challenges. We're interested in solutions from all types of organizations—from established leaders in industry to new start-ups, non-profits, and academic institutions.
Subject matter experts from VA, other government agencies, and industry review proposals. Those selected for award work with VAi2 to design a pilot implementation based on their proposals. After the pilot is completed, each project is evaluated. The most successful will go on to broader deployment and eventually national rollout.
The 2010 and 2011 Industry Innovation Competitions resulted in nearly 600 ideas submitted from industry across eleven topic areas. In total, 37 projects have been selected for award and are in various stages of project design, development, testing, and evaluation. See the Funded Innovations page for a complete list of awardees.
2012 Industry Innovation Competition
On March 29, 2012, Secretary Shinseki announced the opening of VA's third Industry Innovation Competition with four new topics and up to $50 million in potential awards.
Topics
Each Industry Innovation Competition focuses on several unique topics. The topics for 2012 are:
Maternity Continuity of Care
(Presentation | Q&A) The number of women Veterans is growing rapidly, and the increase is largely made up of younger Veterans. In order to provide accessible, quality maternity and obstetric care, VA frequently relies on clinicians outside of the VA system to provide fee-based treatment. VAi2 is interested in proposals that enhance care coordination for maternity patients and their care providers, especially those that offer means of transferring VA patient information between private obstetricians and VA systems.
Redesign of the PTSD Treatment Experience
(Presentation | Q&A) Due to the symptoms and stigma associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), many patients are reluctant to participate in mental health treatment even when they are diagnosed with, or identified as being at risk for, PTSD. VAi2 seeks innovative methods of improving the likelihood that Veterans with PTSD will seek and complete evidence-based treatment. Of particular interest are comprehensive solutions that redesign the experience for Veterans at all phases of the treatment process.
Mobile Applications for eBenefits
(Presentation | Q&A) VA is heavily reliant on national call centers to interact with Veterans, their families, and beneficiaries. At peak times, these information and service requests put stress on VA systems that can often result in dropped calls or online error messages. VAi2 is interested in innovations that apply mobile technology to the challenge of providing Veterans with timely, accurate, and convenient access to tools for submitting service requests and for obtaining information related to benefits and services.
Innovations in Prevention and Treatment of Pressure Ulcers
(Presentation | Q&A) Pressure ulcers are a cause of significant morbidity and mortality among hospitalized, institutionalized, and mobility-compromised individuals. "Getting to zero" for pressure ulcers is a top priority for VA. VAi2 seeks proposals that provide innovative methods for both the prevention and treatment of pressure ulcers. Proposals might address training for staff and patients, tracking of individual wounds, the availability of specialized care, and analytics for continuous improvement of care.
VAi2 hosted an informational webinar on April 10 covering the topic areas and the process for submission and selection. View the presentation slide decks and Q&A using the links above (also see the introductory presentation and list of attendees). Full details for each topic, including suggested use cases and constraints, can be found in the official solicitation.
How to Submit
Please submit proposals electronically to VA's Virtual Office of Acquisition. The web-based tool will also allow you to check on the status of your proposals after they have been submitted.
We will review proposals in two stages:
1. Concept Papers
2. Full Proposals
We ask for short concept papers as a first stage in order to reduce the burden on industry to present ideas. Concept papers should include a brief description of the solution proposed, a rough order of magnitude (cost), a draft implementation timeline, any potential VA integration/support required, and a single-page summary slide (view the required template).
After review, authors of the most promising concept papers will be invited to submit full proposals. Full proposals will provide greater detail on cost, implementation, technology architecture, integration, etc.
For further details on the required content/format for both concept papers and full proposals, please review the official 2012 Industry Innovation Competition solicitation.
