VA, Digital Medicine Society Partner on Framework for Evaluating Innovations

At HIMSS22 in Orlando, Fla., the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) launched a value-driven framework for evaluating healthcare innovations.

The organizations noted that previous frameworks to evaluate the value of healthcare innovations have been limited in focus because of pressures from third-party payers, typically being restricted to analyses of economics, not quality of life; to assessments of population- or individual-level benefits, not both; and to measurements only at a specific time point, not over time. In contrast, they say, their new evaluation framework seeks to capture both financial and quality-of-life effects, reflects value over various periods of time, gathers perspectives from all stakeholders, and assesses effects on both the individual and the system of care.

The announcement of the new framework noted that VHA is free of the considerations that the rest of the healthcare industry faces, making it uniquely positioned to lead this effort for a few key reasons. First, the VHA is not under the influence of third-party payers motivated heavily by per-member-per-month cost. Also, the VHA cannot “cherry-pick” select populations to serve based on payer mix or location. It must serve all the 9+ million veterans who rely on it for care, considering both the health of the individual as well as the system in place to care for them.

“The VHA has an opportunity unlike any other, and we feel confident that this new evaluation framework will serve as a powerful reference for any decision maker in healthcare who is trying to make the right choices about the proliferation and innovation opportunities they face today,” says Jennifer Goldsack, CEO of DiMe, in a statement. “DiMe is thrilled to partner with the VHA on this work, which has the potential to be successfully adopted by the rest of the healthcare market and initiate a new way of measuring success.”

The VHA Innovation Ecosystem website quotes Ryan Vega, M.D., chief officer in the Office of Healthcare Innovation and Learning, as saying: “To innovate the path to high-value care, we must first redefine value beyond just dollars and cents. To ensure that every dollar invested returns value to the veterans we serve, we need to focus on measuring value across access, effectiveness, efficiency, and equity.”