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VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest – $9M in prizes

vascheduling.challenge.gov

11–20 of 42 posts

Re: VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest – $9M in prizes

#11
post #10

"If an individual, an entrant must be a citizen of or permanent resident of the United States". You have already lost 96% of contestants who could have contributed.

Not necessarily. How hard would it be to find an American person to collaborate with who can represent the group?

Not hard. Email me. (Do I get a bonus for veteran status? :D )

Re: VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest – $9M in prizes

#12
This is a ridiculously open-ended spec, and there's a mountain of federal legislation to comply with. I might go as far as to say that it's a reckless way to try to procure software, as it's very much a product which needs to work and be supported over the long term, not some sort of black-box AI quick win.

Re: VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest – $9M in prizes

#13

"If an individual, an entrant must be a citizen of or permanent resident of the United States". You have already lost 96% of contestants who could have contributed.

Leaving plenty of qualified people in the 4%, and avoiding a "government gives our jobs to India" PR disaster.

Re: VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest – $9M in prizes

#14
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. How hard would it be to find an American person to collaborate with who can represent the group?

Not hard. Email me. (Do I get a bonus for veteran status? :D )

Same here. As a user of the VA system this is very much needed and only the tip of the iceberg.

Re: VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest – $9M in prizes

#15
post #7

This is badly needed. Appointments can take longer than two weeks. For example, if a veteran has PTSD and cannot get immediate care when they're experiencing an anxiety attack that lasts for more than a day, it can result in extreme consequences such as suicide.

I want this so bad. I once tried making an appointment for severe pain and was told three months and there was nothing sooner. They told me if I was in severe pain, I could visit my local ER, pay, and submit paperwork for reimbursement. I informed them that I could not afford that option and asked if they were going to treat me for alcoholism because I was going to drink myself to sleep every night for the next three months... I was then told, "Oh, how about next Tuesday. We have a number of reserved appointments that we can assign for high-need cases."

WHAT!?

Re: VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest – $9M in prizes

#16

"If an individual, an entrant must be a citizen of or permanent resident of the United States". You have already lost 96% of contestants who could have contributed.

Leaving plenty of qualified people in the 4%, and avoiding a "government gives our jobs to India" PR disaster.

But if won by an Afghani or Iraqi it could be a PR win.

Re: VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest – $9M in prizes

#17

This is a ridiculously open-ended spec, and there's a mountain of federal legislation to comply with. I might go as far as to say that it's a reckless way to try to procure software, as it's very much a product which needs to work and be supported over the long term, not some sort of black-box AI quick win.

To which legislation in particular are you referring? I often see this claim on HN, but I do not think that most people here have any real understanding of the situation.

As an anecdote, I work on a medical information system for emergency rooms. The VA uses our system in some locations. Federal regulations are not at all onerous. Things like HIPAA are dealt with using a few really basic rules.

Re: VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest – $9M in prizes

#18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not hard. Email me. (Do I get a bonus for veteran status? :D )

Same here. As a user of the VA system this is very much needed and only the tip of the iceberg.

User as in, you're a veteran, or you work for the VA? What problems do you see with the current system?

Re: VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest – $9M in prizes

#19
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. How hard would it be to find an American person to collaborate with who can represent the group?

Not hard. Email me. (Do I get a bonus for veteran status? :D )

Assuming I understand the conditions, you can apply either as an individual (in which case you have to be either a citizen or PR) or an incorporated entity.

Shame, I have a lot of spare time and I'd be up for an interesting project (not sure if this qualifies, I've only skimmed it).

Re: VA Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest – $9M in prizes

#20
$3 million is enough to make me think crazy so after looking through the spec for a while I downloaded VistA to get an idea of how hard it would be to build something in M and integrate it.

To get a flavor of it, here is a random selection from one of the 913 files making up their current scheduling system (said file helpfully named SCAPMC8P.m, pretty much like all the others):

SCDATES2,SCN2,SCPTP,SCX,SCXA,SCXE,SCNA,SCNE,SCPRCLST,SCPRCPTR N SCP1P11,SCP12,SCP13,SCP14P16,SCR N SCLIST1,SCLIST2,SCN3,SCN4,SCPS,SCPSX,SCPSXA,SCPSXE,SCVALHIS ; S @SCLIST@("PR","CH")=$$VALHIST^SCAPMCU5(404.53,SCTP,"SCVALHIS") G:'$$ACTHIST^SCAPMCU5("SCVALHIS","SCDATES") PRECQ G:'$D(SCVALHIS) PRECQ

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