Department of Energy Veterans' Health Initiative Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. NORMAN. 6398, the bill now under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of my bill, H.R. 6398, the Department of Energy Veterans' Health Initiative Act.

This legislation authorizes the Department of Energy, DOE, to conduct collaborative research with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the VA, in order to solve complex, big data challenges in order to improve veterans' healthcare and basic research in advanced computing and data analytics.

The VA hosts one of the world's largest and most valuable health datasets. Through its voluntary data collection program entitled the Million Veterans Program, MVP, the VA has collected detailed health information and genomic data volunteered by over 600,000 veterans.

In order to better use this data to provide better healthcare for our veterans, the VA needs more advanced computing capabilities, infrastructure, and expertise than it has in-house.

As a world leader in high performance computing, DOE is well suited to meet this need. In its national laboratory system, DOE possesses a unique set of cutting-edge research capabilities.

It hosts six of the world's top 10 fastest supercomputers, including the Summit computer in Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is the world's fastest supercomputer. DOE also funds robust research in computational sciences and data analytics, which can be used to solve a range of complex big data challenges in the physical sciences.

The interagency partnership authorized in my bill combines the VA's clinical and population science expertise with DOE's big data science in advanced computing expertise in order to solve critical health challenges for our veterans while creating another path forward for the advancement of big data science tools for the American researchers.

This partnership, called the Million Veterans Program-Computational Health Analytics for Medical Precision to Improve Outcomes Now, or the MVP-CHAMPION program, will use DOE supercomputers to analyze VA health data and look for patterns that will help inform and improve medical treatment for heart disease, traumatic brain injury, and cancer.

Ultimately, the goal of this legislation is for the DOE national laboratories to provide the VA with information it can use to improve healthcare services for veterans.

The bill also requires the Department to establish data storage facilities to securely transmit and store data that the VA provides. This will make certain that privacy and security are maintained for veterans who volunteer for the program.

In addition, this legislation establishes a pilot program within DOE to create a cross-cutting research initiative in artificial intelligence, data analytics, and computational research.

This program will help American scientists stay on the cutting-edge as the computing landscape changes and international competition increases, and will promote the development of the computing tools needed to address big data challenges.

These tools will both help improve the existing MVP-CHAMPION partnership and will advance key DOE mission goals in nuclear security, energy technology, and innovative science research.

Our veterans should have access to better healthcare services and our scientists should remain leaders in advanced computing. The Department of Energy Veterans' Health Initiative Act promises to deliver on both fronts.

Once again, I would like to thank Chairman Smith and the 15 other Science, Space, and Technology Committee members who cosponsored this legislation for supporting my bill.

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Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Chairman Smith, Representative Dunn, Representative Higgins, Representative Lucas, Representative Weber, Representative Knight, Representative Rohrabacher, Representative Hultgren, Representative Babin, Representative Comstock, Representative Abraham, Representative Biggs, Representative Marshall, Representative Lesko, Representative Lipinski, Representative Rosen, Representative Bilirakis, Representative Gallagher, Representative Bill Johnson, and Representative Walter Jones for their continued leadership in providing support for our veterans and enabling critical science research.

I would also like to thank the stakeholders and researchers who have provided valuable feedback as we develop this legislation.

H.R. 6398 supports a program that will encourage innovation in basic science and big data research at DOE, and ensure that we as a Nation are doing everything we can to improve healthcare for our veterans.

Mr. Speaker, I urge the adoption of this commonsense legislation and yield back the balance of my time.

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