The second round of winners for the Veteran Affairs’ (VA) Industry Innovation Competition was announced on Friday. Six non-profit organizations were honored with five new projects that will help Veterans in the business and health world.
The VA Innovation Initiative (VAi2) funded and designed these projects to improve the quality of care and reduce the costs for technology for Veterans.
“VAi2 gives the Department the ability to find new solutions for some of our toughest challenges, and this next round is a promising expansion,” said VAi2 Director, Jonah Czerwinski.
Halfaker and Associates located in Arlington, Va. was selected as a winner of the competition. A virtual, online business accelerator was given as their award to assist Veterans in their businesses. The device offers tools, resources and business coaches for mentoring.
The Veteran Entrepreneurial Transfer, Inc. from Milwaukee, Wis. was also awarded with a business incubator. This allows Veterans to start establishing new companies by offering business mentors, working environment and other resources to launch their small business.
Magpie Healthcare, headquartered in Westminster, Colo. was also awarded. VA will give the company’s clinicians in Portland, Ore. ways to connect to on-call clinical staff easily and activate patient care teams in a quick manner.
DSS, Inc from Juno Beach, Fla. and TheraDoc from Salt Lake City, Utah will both be awarded with a technical device to use in their Veteran clinics. In their medical centers in Texas, Missouri and Illinois, the device will use laboratory data to look at patients at risk with drug reactions, as well as reduce medical complications.
The sixth company is Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. Similar to DSS Inc. and TheraDoc, this business also received a device to detect drug reaction. This new technology will go to the institute’s medical center in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The next round of awards will be revealed in the next coming weeks.
