news Tester Leads Committee’s First Roundtable on A.I. and its Potential Impact on Veterans’ Care and Benefits

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(U.S. Senate) — Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester today hosted a landmark roundtable to discuss the current use and potential future application of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to better provide veterans their earned health care and benefits. Tester was joined by Committee members, VA officials, and an expert from the RAND Corporation.
“A.I. has the potential to make big changes to our world, and can create new opportunities for VA to better fulfill its mission to serve veterans,” said Tester. “These new systems could improve our medical and scientific knowledge for the men and women who served. However, as A.I. continues to grow, it is critically important that its implementation is ethical and protects veteran data and patient safety.”
The Senator continued, “Today, I want to hear about how VA can leverage the potential of this technology to expand treatment options for veterans, especially those in rural areas, and use it to process veterans’ claims in a more accurate and timely manner. Above all, I want to make clear that trust from veterans is critical for VA to fulfill its mission and we need to ensure veterans and staff are included in any A.I. roll-out. Staff need to be assured A.I. is going to assist them in their roles serving our nations veterans—not replace them.”
A.I. relies on robust data sets to operate, and VA has the most comprehensive administrative, financial, and medical record data in the world. This provides VA an unique opportunity to improve its delivery of health care, advance its research, identify diseases and guide patient treatment plans, expand veterans’ access to benefits, assist in claims processing, and further medical and scientific knowledge for the betterment of all veterans.
Read more at: https://www.veterans.senate.gov/202...otential-impact-on-veterans-care-and-benefits
 

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The Senator continued, “Today, I want to hear about how VA can leverage the potential of this technology to expand treatment options for veterans, especially those in rural areas, and use it to process veterans’ claims in a more accurate and timely manner...
This is excellent news for the future of veteran's claims!

I went through the process of applying for my veterans benefits in the VONAPP era. As an extra measure, I also submitted paper records to support my claim. The entire process took around 9 months from start to finish to receive my first decision.

However, I have a theory that by incorporating AI and digitization, the role of an evaluator could potentially become almost obsolete and decisions could be made within a mere 9 minutes instead, with a higher level review, CUE, etc. being a manual process that could be tremendously sped up due to the larger chunk of decisions made accurately and promptly.

To expand on that, your medical records could be converted into a digital format and analyzed by AI. The system would then compare them to 38 CFR Part 4—Schedule for Rating Disabilities (essentially the guidebook for your Veterans Affairs claim) and automatically assign an appropriate rating for your "claim".

While there might be some imperfections, is it possible that the system could operate more efficiently? Once perfected, I believe that this could lead to claims and appeals moving significantly faster than they currently do.
 
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