HP Donates Funds to Veterans Service Organizations
PALO ALTO, Calif., November 11, 2013 /3BL Media/ - HP today announced it has donated its $495,000 prize for winning third place in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest to four Veterans Services Organizations.
The donation will support a full range of programs and services for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of American (IAVA), Disabled American Veterans (DAV), Paralyzed Veterans of America and the Fisher House Foundation. The prize was awarded to the HP Open Source community for developing a solution for the VA’s complex medical scheduling system.
The grants were announced during several events commemorating the service and sacrifice of veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces, including the 2013 New York City Veterans Day Parade on Nov. 11, and the closing ceremonies of the inaugural DAV 5K walk/run event in Cincinnati on Saturday, Nov. 9.
The IAVA grant will be used to build out a new employment program for veterans, providing members with digital guidance from career experts, human resources representatives and veteran employees at top companies. Funding to DAV will help support the organization’s National Service Program, a network of 100 offices throughout the United States and Puerto Rico that provides free benefits counseling and services to veterans and their families.
HP also awarded a grant to the Paralyzed Veterans of America 2013 Americana Gala, an annual celebration that recognizes the organization’s work on behalf of veterans with disabilities and their families. HP funding to the Fisher House Foundation will support the Sponsor a Family Program and provide 1,000 free nights to military families at Fisher Houses in the Washington, D.C., area.
“HP has a long history of helping U.S. military veterans through community outreach events, sponsorships and employment opportunities,” said Don Picard, federal healthcare vice president, U.S. Public Sector, HP Enterprise Services. “This contribution reinforces our commitment to serving and honoring America’s veterans by ensuring they have direct access to programs, services and innovative solutions to meet their needs.”
The contest, which was authorized by the America Competes Act and the Challenge.gov program, tasked the technology industry with developing new, open source systems that would help veterans make appointments for VA outpatient and ambulatory care from the Veteran Health Administration. The current VA scheduling architecture presents several challenges, including the inability for providers across the VA system to integrate calendars, lack of support for best care practices and incompatibility with many modern mobile devices.
The contest was driven by VA’s decision to transition the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) to an open-architecture product, and was aimed at providing VA with the information it will need to make effective scheduling procurements in the future.
To address VA’s challenges, HP created an architectural proof-of-concept implementation engineered to help manage multisite care and support diverse care teams. The submission was designed to integrate with legacy VA systems, such as VistA, enabling the VA to easily incorporate the scheduling solution into its existing framework.
As a part of its contest submission, HP and its team members also emphasized the use of open source technologies and approaches. Additionally, in recognition of the team’s support of open source solutions, all of the software code relating to HP’s submission will be donated to the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA).
For more than 17 years, HP has served as a trusted partner to the VA by providing technology solutions and services that improve clinical efficiency, staff productivity and most importantly veteran care.
Additional information about HP Enterprise Services’ government business is available at www.hp.com/enterprise/government.
About HP
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