Department of Energy Veterans' Health Initiative Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of Representative Norman's bill, H.R. 617, the Department of Energy Veterans' Health Initiative Act.

This bill authorizes a critical and ongoing partnership between the Department of Energy and the Department of Veterans Affairs to improve the way we diagnose and care for our veterans. This partnership, known as the MVP-CHAMPION initiative, allows DOE to support the VA in analyzing healthcare data.

H.R. 617 formally authorizes this program, allowing VA researchers to gain access to DOE's high-performance computing research facilities and significant resources, including DOE's extensive expertise in data analysis and complex modeling.

The VA currently collects genomic and healthcare data, including the deepest levels of DNA sequencing that allows for high-quality genomic research, from veterans who have volunteered for the program. This data is then securely transferred to DOE, where it is stored and analyzed in a secure site at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

This partnership and exchange of data benefits both DOE and the VA. The rich and expansive dataset provided by the VA presents an incredible opportunity to train DOE's next-generation computing capacities to solve complex challenges; and with what they learn from this analysis, the VA can improve and better target health treatments for veterans.

This data can help the VA make discoveries about the causes of various diseases and develop diagnostics to move more quickly to detect them in our veterans. It will also help the VA develop more effective treatments and improve treatment for critical medical needs.

In return, by giving DOE access to such a large database of information, the VA will help DOE researchers improve their ability to develop next-generation computing systems, algorithms, and models, capacities that are critical in maintaining U.S. science and technological leadership.

These enhanced capacities can then be applied in support of DOE's core mission areas and has the potential to enhance expertise in everything from biosciences and material designs to maintaining our nuclear weapons stockpile.

With the next generation of supercomputers right around the corner, most notably, the computing systems that DOE is expected to field in 2021, DOE will be able to tackle even bigger challenges after gaining expertise in solving big data problems like this.

In short, the Department of Energy Veterans' Health Initiative Act will improve the healthcare for those men and women who have served our country. It also maximizes our Federal resources for facilitating collaboration, and gives other agencies, academia, and industry the chance to benefit from the Department of Energy's R&D expertise.

I want to thank Representative Norman for championing this important collaboration, along with the basic research that will support our veterans and American innovation.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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