Blog

Legislative Update from Washington- H.R. 617

Washington, D.C., July 23, 2019

We had a huge win today in the House with a bill I sponsored for our veterans. I love passing along this kind of news.

For background information, the Veterans Administration has acquired a mountain of healthcare information on our veterans, including medical history and genomic data volunteered by over 600,000 men and women who served.

What we know is that within these massive data sets are trends, patterns, and correlations that can help the VA better care for our veterans. But the problem is the VA doesn’t have the computing power (or expertise) to analyze it all. In other words, the VA needs more advanced computing capabilities than is currently available at the agency.

That’s where the Department of Energy (DOE) can help. The DOE is an ideal partner to help the VA in this situation. Of the world’s top ten fastest supercomputers, the DOE owns half of them. That includes the world’s fastest at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Plus, the DOE coordinates and funds research used to solve a wide range of complex big data challenges, so this is right in their wheelhouse.

My legislation, H.R. 617, will create a partnership between the VA and DOE to extract meaningful insights from the VA’s data, and ultimately provide better care for our nation’s veterans. 26 other Representatives in the House – both Democrats and Republicans – signed on as co-sponsors. And there’s also a bi-partisan companion bill in the Senate, so I think we’re going to see this program launched very soon.

Lot of work still remains for our nation's veterans. But today was a very important step in that journey.