Innovation at the VA
Why is VHA Innovation Ecosystem collaborating with the Catalyst program?
Why should you, a member of the VA care and research team, become a Catalyst Fellow?
You are intimately aware of high priority challenges, needs, and opportunities, which means you are well positioned to influence impactful changes.
You have the opportunity to:
Enhance your career
You can strengthen your communication skills to work more effectively with business and industry leaders, gain confidence in engaging on cross-disciplinary teams (with engineers, researchers, and improvement advisors), and contribute to creation of intellectual property.
Consider the commercial possibilities of improving patient outcomes and institutional effectiveness
In this program, you will work with teams of engineers, scientists, and other clinicians to identify, validate, and create a path to implementation for technologies and processes that create solutions in healthcare delivery.
Expand your personal horizon
You will exercise entrepreneurial thinking and increase comfort with ambiguity. Validated projects have the potential to significantly impact healthcare. You might even create and lead a company, as Catalyst Fellows have done in the past and are doing now.
Your commitment to Catalyst
Time commitment is 10-15 hours per week.
Weekly sessions: Wednesdays from 10am to 1pm ET
Group discussion sessions: Mondays, from 10am to 11am ET
Director and Coordinators
Suzanne Shirley, LCSW
Indra Sandal, PhD, MBA
Chief of Innovation
US Department of Veterans Affairs
Samantha Sissel
Michael Catania, MBA
Director of Innovation at the VA Greater Los Angeles
Gina Green, OTD, MOT, OTR/L
Innovation Specialist, VA Northeast Ohio Healthcare System