Lighthouse
Last year, we embarked on a journey to find a way to deliver the type of health technology experience our Veterans were getting from our private sector counterparts, but on a VA platform that was built to accommodate our Veterans’ unique needs. We identified industry best practices and existing architecture that could be configured to fit into VA’s IT framework. And then we got to work.
By working from the outside in, we built requirements based on real Veterans. We put the Veteran first and developed a proof of concept to see if this technology could work not just for our Veterans, but for VA.
And it did.
Leveraging a model of public-private partnerships, we completed a proof of concept for the Digital Health Platform—now called Lighthouse—marking an entirely new approach to health care and beyond.
Lighthouse connects data from different sources, using an open-source Application Programming Interface (API) Gateway platform on a private VA cloud. This architecture enables external app developers to build apps—both mobile and web—on a standard set of APIs that we developed to serve our Veterans’ needs. This in turn allows VA to make changes to our underlying systems, get rid of old databases, and make necessary upgrades, without disrupting the user experience.
When completed, Veterans will be able to manage their own health experience with a platform that is innovative, interoperable, streamlined, and secure. They will be able to:
- Schedule appointments, view medical records, and manage their care plans
- Video conference with doctors and contact their entire care team
- Manage medications and refill prescriptions
- Aggregate and use data from the smartphone/ smartwatch apps they already use
- Connect to non-VA community health care providers in real time
Lighthouse is a radical departure from how people imagine a government bureaucracy works. Lighthouse will enable Veterans to take control of their health in ways that are both convenient and accessible. They will enjoy a real-time, comprehensive view of their health care that is available with a simple tap on their smartphones. Leveraging best- in-class commercial innovation to achieve a seamless patient and provider experience, Lighthouse is proof that VA can and will continually evolve to meet—and even anticipate—Veterans’ needs.
Think of an API as a server in a restaurant. Imagine you are sitting at a table with a menu of choices to order from, and the kitchen is the part of the system that will prepare the order. What’s missing is the critical link to communicate your order to the kitchen and deliver your food back to your table. That’s where the server, or API, comes in.
The server is the messenger that takes your order or request and tells the system—in this case, the kitchen—what to do. Then the API (or server) delivers the response back to you (brings you your food).
