Q&A: Virginia seeks to prevent veteran suicide with medical technology

According to the agency, 6,146 veterans committed suicide in 2020, making suicide the 13th leading cause of death in the general population and the second leading cause of death among veterans under the age of 45. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Annual Report 2022.

With these Launched last year, VA’s Daybreak Grand Challenge aims to encourage innovation to provide more mental health support to veterans and eliminate suicide among veterans. Last month it awarded $20 million to 30 winners, including mental health company NeuroFlow and VR platform OxfordVR.

Dr. Amanda Purnell, Director of Data and Analytics Innovation at the Veterans Health Administration Innovation Ecosystem, spoke with MobiHealthNews about the competition, which received more than 1,300 entries.

MobiHealthNews: How were the winners of the Mission Daybreak Challenge chosen?

Dr. Amanda Purnell: A number of criteria were set for judges. There were several of us judges. We assessed each application against this criterion independently and then came together and discussed based on those assessments and selected the winners based both on the criteria outlined and our feasibility and ability to pilot these efforts.

We didn’t want to influence individual judges. We wanted to take into account the individual experience of all judges. We were deliberately chosen to be different in background, age, gender and experience so that every independent point of view is taken into account in the evaluation.

MHN: Why did the challenge coordinators decide to make digital medical technologies one of the focus areas?

Purnell: We were interested in digital health solutions as one of the areas of activity. We were also interested in community efforts. We were interested in efforts that could combine community or intervention protocols with digital solutions. We didn’t want to unnecessarily narrow the scope. But why we have included data on digital health and digital life is that research is at an early stage, and innovation indicates that there is new information that can be obtained from data collected from digital devices, as well as data collected through how a person interacts with their digital systems. This includes laptops, computers, phones. And this information can help us to be even better – and perhaps more objective – to predict and intervene to support people in crisis.

MHN: And how long do you think it will take to give veterans access to this technology?

Purnell: This is a very government response. It’s true! We base our decisions on science. So, depending on these pilot projects and proof-of-concept efforts, and the clinical implementation research that goes along with it, we might be able to determine, based on initial findings, how and at what speed to scale up. So we’re actually based on evidence. Suicide is a top clinical priority and has remained so for some time. Thus, for very promising evidence, new practices, or solutions, some barriers are removed due to the importance of this issue.

MHN: What are you most looking forward to as you move forward?

Purnell: What I really enjoyed about this challenge – I was lucky enough to be a mentor and referee, and facilitate access to data – was to see how the teams work together. The uniqueness of this challenge and our goal in moving forward is to see the exponential benefit of different people and teams with different backgrounds and areas of expertise working together to add value to each other’s solutions. This part is really exciting, in addition to the hundreds of people – and I suspect the number will only grow – who volunteer their time as mentors and subject matter experts to help guide these decisions. So for me it’s a kind of energy and enthusiasm of optimism that it is possible to influence the issue of suicide and that if we take a bold and bold standpoint that by working together we can succeed. I think this kind of thinking really inspires me.

Mary Kratz will go into more detail during her HIMSS23 session “Improving Interoperability with Open Source Simulation Environments”. It will take place on Wednesday, April 19 at 4-5 pm PT in the South Building in room S504.