Artificial Intelligence Expands at HHS, VA and DHA

Published: September 29, 2021

Federal Market AnalysisArtificial Intelligence/Machine LearningCoronavirus (COVID-19) PandemicDHAHHSInformation TechnologySpending TrendsVA

Artificial Intelligence (AI) spending increased at all three agencies between FY 2018 to 2020, totaling $154M and growing 205% over the three-year period.

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing among federal departments and the same holds true for those with health-centric missions. I have written about big data and cloud spending at HHS, VA and DHA, and now it is AI’s turn.

AI in the healthcare arena shows promise in improving daily tasks, research and programs. AI use in healthcare may include:

  • Predicting health and risk trends
  • Recommending treatments
  • Drug discovery
  • Automating administrative and care tasks
  • Creating models of diseases or medical devices
  • Identifying waste, fraud and abuse in medical claims and insurance

COVID-19 accelerated the emerging technology’s use within public health agencies. The pandemic’s demand for nation-wide statistics, public health information, vaccine development and unmanned systems targeted AI use in health care. For example, the CDC and VA both implemented AI chatbots to field questions and screen individuals for the virus (CDC’s Coronavirus Self-Checker), and help determine the severity of confirmed cases and potential locations for patient admission (VA).

Looking at AI spending among the three agencies, investment in the technology burst, particularly at the VA and DHA, from FY 2018 to 2020:

Sources: FPDS, Deltek

Observations:

  • Automation-related obligations drove increased AI spending at the VA, growing from $1.2M in FY 2018 to $14M in FY 2020. Likewise, investments in automation also accounted for the jump in spending at DHS, with $1.9M in FY 2018 to $23M in FY 2020
  • COVID-19 obligations totaled $19M in the three-year period, primarily at HHS and DHA
    • A sample DHA COVID-19 AI requirement includes the “DHA Pharmacy Inpatient Automation Solution for COVID-19 Disease Sites”
    • A sample HHS COVID-19 AI requirement includes “Text-based medical care via a smartphone interface and AI to access, triage and diagnose COVID-19”
  • NIH led HHS AI spending with $27M total, experiencing a 603% increase in the three-year period. IHS ($17M) and CMS ($16M) followed NIH in top total spend by bureau at HHS.
  • Spending on AI services among the three agencies totaled $137M vs. $17M on AI products in the three year period
    • UiPath and NVIDIA led AI products at HHS, totaling $330K and $260K, respectively
    • Kofax led AI products at DHA, totaling $456K
    • UiPath led AI spending in products at the VA, totaling $90K
  • HHS awarded $38M in AI obligations to small businesses in the three-year period. Meanwhile, DHA awarded $30M and the VA awarded $18M to small businesses in the same time frame.

While AI is poised to transform health environments, the technology faces several challenges for implementation. The lack of transparency in AI systems raises security risks in the health sector. Moreover, differentiating health systems prevent AI technologies from scaling and integration. As AI works best with high quality, structured and unbiased data, the limitations, complexity and disparity of public health data often restricts AI progress in the sector.  These challenges potentially provide pockets of opportunity for contractors to step in and assist agencies in public health data management and security risk assessments.

For more information on AI and its role in public health IT, refer to Deltek’s Federal Health IT, 2021 - 2023 report. Deltek also published the Federal Artificial Intelligence Landscape, 2022 report to provide insight to the growing AI market in the federal marketplace.