The growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning has begun to tackle transitions of care and inform healthcare decision making within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Using open-source components and housed in a multicloud platform, called Arches, the VA is changing lives for providers and patients.

“We have to bring in human-centered design to make use of AI or machine learning models and make sure that there’s trust in those models and that we can clearly articulate value for the clinicians and care teams on the ground,” said Amanda Purnell (pictured, right), director of data and analytics innovation at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “Arches is the technology platform, but there’s no magical technology that’s going to change how humans interact.”

Purnell and Ben Cushing (pictured, left), chief architect of federal health and life sciences at Red Hat Inc., spoke with industry analysts Dave Vellante and Paul Gillin at Red Hat Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed gathering insights from decades of health data and how AI-informed analysis found a diagnostic discrepancy. (* Disclosure below.)

Optimizing diagnosis and patient outcomes using AI

The VA was at the forefront of healthcare in adopting electronic health records, so there is plenty of data for analysis. Gathering data from disparate sources and analyzing it in order to creating actionable changes to the process is the pathway to the goal of providing better outcomes for patients.

“Arches is right in that space at the knowledge layer of taking that data and turning it into actual insight and something that is usable and insightful for clinicians to affect the ability to deliver better care and also to actually improve their own working experience,” Cushing said.

One such discovery was found in how AI was detecting chronic kidney disease in Black patients. A doctor — Dr. Joshi — detected the discrepancy, rewrote the algorithm, and was able to implement it within Arches in a timely and effective manner.

“We have the opportunity to empower enthusiastic people like Dr. Joshi to discover insights; she’s a talented informaticist, so she could do the technical. We were able to provision the tools and environment she needed to be able to test and develop the new insight and then begin to validate that and test it in other facilities,” Purnell said.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Red Hat Summit event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Red Hat Summit. Neither Red Hat Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE