The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has announced the 2012 Industry Innovation Competition, which focuses on innovations in Veteran health care and benefits.

The VA website shared that the competition identifies and tests promising innovations that bring improvement to the accessibility, as well as the quality of care and services delivered to Veterans.

The competition is part of the $50 million department-wide program called the VA Innovation Initiative (VAi2), which aims to find the most promising innovations from employees, the private sector, non-profit organizations, and the academe, that focus on the following: increasing Veteran access to VA services; improving the quality of services delivered; enhancing the performance of VA operations; and reduce or control the cost of delivering those services.

Eric K. Shinseki, Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, shared: “VA has established a track record as an innovative organization that welcomes new ideas… This competition represents an important way for us to tap the significant pool of talent and expertise outside of government to improve care and services for our Nation’s Veterans, their families and survivors.”

Jonah Czerwinski, Senior Advisor to the Secretary and Director of the VAi2 program, on the other hand, shared: “VAi2 launches this year’s competition to solve very real challenges facing Veterans every day… We are confident that industry will respond with ideas that can improve outcomes for those we are here to serve.”

Public and private companies, entrepreneurs, universities and non-profit organizations that would like to join in the competition are urged to propose innovations on the following:

• Enhance Maternity Continuity of Care
• Redesign the PTSD Treatment Experience
• Create Mobile Applications for Benefits Information and Services
• Prevent and Treat Pressure Ulcers