The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) continues to expand its use of artificial intelligence, with Chief AI Officer (CAIO) Charles Worthington stating that the agency plans to scale AI use cases across the department in 2025.
In an interview with MeriTalk, Worthington – who also serves as the VA’s chief technology officer – said the number of AI use cases in the VA’s inventory increased by over 100 from 2023 to 2024, and he predicts that number will only grow.
“The big theme for 2025 is to scale useful AI products across the VA,” Worthington said. “We’re focusing on trying to figure out what are some of the VA’s most pressing challenges and then line up where we think AI can help with those challenges.”
“We have a lot of promising use cases out there, and the theme, I think, of the coming year is to scale some of those most promising use cases,” he added.
For example, Worthington explained one use case that has seen early success is an on-network generative AI chat interface for VA employees. The interface is essentially the equivalent of a commercial tool such as ChatGPT, but it can be used securely with VA data.
The agency started piloting the tool last year, and Worthington said the VA just scaled from about 1,000 users to about 4,000 users currently.
“We’re getting really promising early results from that. Of the people that are in that pilot, 72 percent of them agree or strongly agree that the tool made them more efficient,” he said. “So, we’re taking feedback like that, and we’re going to be constantly measuring as we expand to ensure that there is a high ROI.”
Another example Worthington shared is an AI tool used to assist in colonoscopies. A recent VA study found the provision of colonoscopy AI devices resulted in a statistically significant 21 percent increase in the odds of adenoma detection and an absolute detection increase of approximately four percent compared to colonoscopies without the device. Higher adenoma detection rates are associated with lower late-stage cancer incidence and reduced mortality.
The VA is piloting another healthcare-related AI use case in which an “ambient scribe” assists in clinical encounters. This tool utilizes natural language processing to summarize the encounter for the patient’s electronic health record, saving doctors vital time.
“The ultimate payoff is going to be basically equipping people to just do their jobs with a lot more effectiveness and efficiency,” Worthington said.
“I think that the way that this is ultimately going to be implemented is going to be deeply integrating AI into most software,” he explained. “Right now, the way most of us are experiencing [AI] is like a separate tool and a separate browser tab that you sort of chat with, but I think that’s probably a temporary way that people will experience this.”
Worthington said the VA is “really excited” to figure out how to implement AI “into systems that have complex workflows.”
Generative AI is not yet widely available to Federal employees, but Worthington predicts “that will dramatically change” in the next three to five years by which time the majority of Feds will have access to it – “and it’ll be weird if you don’t.”
Additionally, he hopes the VA’s AI use case inventory can become a “continuously evolving list based on what’s happening” within the agency, as opposed to a “point-in-time snapshot exercise.”
“I think it helps us in the goals of identifying where things are working and where we want to invest more,” he explained, adding, “and I think just knowing all the different uses of AI across the enterprise is really helpful for VA leaders.”
Finally, the CAIO said another goal for this year is to continue investing in the VA’s AI workforce.
“It’s really important to have a group of folks at the VA that has the skill and experience to both oversee but also to actually integrate these sorts of tools,” Worthington stressed. “I think continuing to invest in our workforce and to make sure that some of the country’s leading AI experts are doing part of their career in public service, at VA especially, I think is one of my big goals.”
