The Veterans Administration’s (VA) Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) www.queri.research.va.gov/default.cfm# focuses on chronic heart failure, diabetes, eHealth, HIV/Hepatitis, Ischemic Heart Disease, Mental Health, Polytrauma, and Blast-Related Injuries, Spinal Cord Injuries, Stroke, and Substance use Disorder.
QUERI is in place to identify priority conditions and opportunities to improve the health of veterans, identify effective practices to improve outcomes for priority conditions, examine variations in existing practices, and evaluate the feasibility and impact of coordinated improvement programs.
The VA’s eHealth-QUERI evaluates eHealth as a model of care to help veterans and their families. VA eHealth tools include the use of personal health records, mHealth applications, point of service kiosks, patient-facing web applications, and home telehealth applications.
The goal is to access the meaningful use of eHealth tools and to enable veterans to self-manage and participate in collaborative care through the design and implementation of appropriate eHealth tools.
QUERI’s clinical focus on eHealth is applicable across health conditions and initial projects have focused on the My HealtheVet (MHV) system. QUERI investigators are working with the MHV program office on data analysis, evaluating the Blue Button feature of the MHV system, providing insights into factors that can influence the work of MHV facility coordinators, plus working to improve secure messaging.