“To better monitor veterans’ mental health, especially during the pandemic, the Department of Veterans Affairs is relying on data and artificial intelligence-based analytics.”
“VA is working with Medallia, a customer experience management company, on its Veterans Signals (VSignals) program. Launched at the end of last year, VSignals collects feedback from veterans, eligible dependents, caregivers and survivors receiving services, analyzes it for key words or a vocal tone that indicates mental health risk and routes alerts in real time to the appropriate responders.”
“Medallia worked with VA’s mental health services and the Veterans Crisis Line to establish a library of key terms and sentiments that would get flagged. For instance, ‘if a veteran is saying they have financial hardship or if a veteran is saying, ‘I can’t pay my rent,’ ‘I’m late on my bills’ or ‘I’m failing in my school’… it will automatically flag that issue,’ said Lee Becker, solutions principal at Medallia. Additionally, the AI can identify any type of negativity in a response, even if it’s not in the existing set of crisis-related topics, he said: ‘AI is able to bubble up issues that the VA may have not even thought of. That was very important for COVID.’”
“During the pandemic, the department is using the technology to identify COVID hotspots and concerns that veterans and families might have. VA officials have increased telehealth availability and doubled-down on mental health access, Becker said…”
“Overall, VSignals’ goals are twofold, he said: It enables VA employees to deliver the experience they want veterans and caregivers to get, and it helps veterans by ensuring that their needs are met…” Read the full article here.
Source: AI-based ‘listening’ helps VA monitor vets’ mental health – By Stephanie Kanowitz, October 7, 2020. GCN.
