U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
VETERANS AFFAIRS

Dr. Anne Lord Bailey is the Director of Clinical Tech Innovation for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Innovation Ecosystem (IE) and the Immersive Tech Lead for Office of Healthcare Innovation and Learning (OHIL). As the Immersive Tech Lead, Dr. Anne Lord Bailey expertly works across the Immersive Tech growth lane to encourage VHA employees to think outside of the box and strengthen their innovation muscle around immersive technologies at VHA. VHA, as many other large organizations, can oftentimes be siloed, with multiple people unknowingly working to solve the same problem. 

The Immersive Tech team works collaboratively to simulate, scale, and sustain immersive technology innovation at VHA with the goal of improving the lives of employees and Veterans. As immersive technology is implemented across VHA, the data on Veteran benefits speak for themselves. For example, almost three hundred sessions have been completed using XR as a distraction tool to help decrease pain, stress and anxiety, boredom and restless behaviors while also aiding relaxation. For Veterans suffering from acute and chronic pain, 61% saw a drop in pain intensity. One hundred percent of Veterans using XR to aid with restless behaviors felt a decrease in restlessness, and 67% of those Veterans also exhibited an increase in calm and cooperative behavior.

Dr. Bailey and team readily encourage VHA employees to come to them with a problem and/or proposed solutions. Together with key stakeholders across the organization, the team works to find ways to get to yes. Creating an immersive technology community and network across the VHA enterprise is an enormous feat in and of itself that will have lasting and important impacts, but seeing the success that has come from using immersive technology in VHA is something far more impressive.