Dr. Shereef Elnahal, VA Under Secretary for Health, speaks during a press conference outside of Building A of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs at 1700 North Wheeling St in Aurora, Colorado on March 4, 2024. Elnahal announced the creation of an interagency testing ground for healthcare AI applications at the Veterans Health Administration Innovation Experience Oct. 30. Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
VA announces creation of new AI testing ground with FDA
VA Undersecretary for Health Shereef Elnahal told Nextgov/FCW that the testing environment is “a check in the process” to ensure that AI tools comply with federal guidance on the use of emerging tech.
The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Food and Drug Administration are partnering to launch an interagency testing ground for healthcare-related artificial intelligence tools.
VA Undersecretary for Health Shereef Elnahal announced the news during the Veterans Health Administration Innovation Experience conference on Wednesday, saying that the agencies are establishing a joint health AI lab to evaluate promising emerging technologies.
Elnahal said the lab will serve as asset for federal agencies and the private sector “to be able to test applications of AI in a virtual lab environment to ensure not only that they work and that they're safe and effective for veterans and for patients,” but that they also “adhere to trustworthy AI principles.”
President Joe Biden signed an executive order in October 2023 that outlined governmentwide guidelines around the safe, secure and trustworthy adoption and use of new AI capabilities. Wednesday’s announcement came on the one year anniversary of the order’s release.
In an interview with Nextgov/FCW on the sidelines of the conference, Elnahal said the lab will ensure “there's a check in the process so that we're not ultimately running afoul of those principles.”
“It’s essentially a place where you get rapid but effective evaluation — from FDA’s standpoint and from VA’s standpoint — on a potential new application of generative AI to, number one, make sure it works,” he added, calling the combined safety and usability testing “a really big strength.”
Elnahal also said the lab’s virtual setup will allow for AI technologies to be evaluated in an environment that meets the executive order’s safe and secure requirements.
“As long as they go through the right security protocols, we'd essentially be inviting parties to test their technology with a fenced off set of VA data that doesn't have any risk of contagion into our actual live systems, but it's still informative and simulated,” he said.
VA and FDA have an agreement in place to launch the lab and are now working out the final details to establish the virtual proving ground — a process that Elnahal said will likely take about six months.
In a video message shared at the conference, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf called the joint testing environment “the first intergovernmental health AI laboratory” and added that it will be based at the VA to provide “an avenue for developing approaches for assessing safety and performance metrics of AI-enabled healthcare products for product developers at the national level.”