What You Need to Know About HHS’s AI Strategy
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released a new AI strategy to transform agency operations. Reflecting the federal government’s increasing emphasis on AI adoption, HHS is looking to expand the use of the rapidly advancing technology and encourage workforce development. It outlines a department-level transformation focused on more coordinated enterprise efforts, centralization and shared resources in a vision they are calling OneHHS. This approach is intended to help eliminate information silos and improve coordination and collaboration across agencies to build AI infrastructure, streamline workflows and enhance cybersecurity. Driving the AI Strategy forward are five pillars:
- Ensure governance and risk management for public trust
- Design infrastructure and platforms for user needs
- Promote workforce development and burden reduction for efficiency
- Foster health research and reproducibility through gold-standard science
- Enable care and public health delivery modernization for better outcomes
This strategy and these pillars represent a first step in improving HHS operations and use of AI. For technology vendors, this strategy signals rising demand for scalable AI platforms, secure data architectures and workforce-ready tools that can integrate across HHS’s diverse mission areas. Within these pillars, there are overarching themes intended to help drive the department towards success including, modernizing the data foundation, infrastructure enablement and striving for better outcomes.
Data Foundations
Data infrastructure modernization is a crucial piece in enabling the use, governance and scalability of AI. HHS is accelerating investments to consolidate IT systems and centralize infrastructure as part of the proposed larger department restructuring and Make America Healthy Again initiative. There are already several efforts underway to advance health data interoperability, utility and standardized quality while still preserving data privacy and security. This creates opportunities for technology companies offering data management, secure data sharing capabilities and tools that enforce compliance through automation.
To make measurable progress, HHS is looking to build a modernized data infrastructure with reusable data that supports efficient data curation, leverages existing investments and improves data access and transparency. There will be opportunities for technology firms to support the digitization and curation of data for machine readability and AI models. Technology companies offering tools for automated data quality assessments, data traceability and structured data generation will play a critical role as HHS looks to build reusable, high-quality datasets. Vendors and partners who can provide model auditability and transparency will have an advantage. Ultimately, a stronger data foundation will enable HHS to accelerate innovation and more advanced AI infrastructure across the department.
Infrastructure Enablement
In the AI strategy, HHS is also looking to deliver a reusable “value layer” of AI infrastructure and platforms that can be leveraged across the department. The idea is to provide a common suite of shared resources including secure computing, scalable data repositories, model hosting services, evaluation testbeds and orchestration tools for AI. To support this vision, the department will favor open-source tools, open standards and transparent frameworks, where feasible. This is the basis of the OneHHS vision, helping to ensure new AI solutions can be efficiently deployed and have the ability operate across different environments and systems. There will be opportunities for vendors and partners to support increasing demand for open-source compatible tools, secure compute environments and enterprise level orchestration platforms.
Security and compliance will remain a high priority in developing new standards and modernizing infrastructure. Improving coordination and streamlining infrastructure investments with a OneHHS mindset should ultimately enable improved governance, security and risk management. However, with various health data privacy and security requirements, there will be obstacles to achieving a new unified and centralized infrastructure. Technology companies that tailor AI tools to mission-centric security requirements, support modular observability capabilities and can operate in multi-cloud and hybrid environments will be well positioned.
Better Outcomes
AI-enabled infrastructure is intended to promote better outcomes both internally and externally. As part of the third pillar, the aim is to improve workforce development and increase business operational efficiencies. Efficiencies can be applied to reducing administrative burden, accelerating scientific discoveries, healthcare delivery and other mission-critical functions. HHS will be looking to private industry to support designing and deploying new AI technologies to target increased efficiency and innovation. According to the strategy document, HHS expects a 70% increase in new use cases to support department-wide innovation. The department’s expected growth in AI use cases opens the door for vendors and partners to introduce mission-aligned tools in areas such as public health analytics, claims automation, research acceleration and healthcare delivery optimization.
HHS is focused on fostering health research innovation and efficiency with a shared resources approach. This includes leveraging federated data and promoting open interface and open datasets to accelerate scientific discovery. Using shared resources for research will require improved data standardization, data governance frameworks, and data accessibility for rapid discovery. Vendors and partners who demonstrate alignment with HHS’s data interoperability requirements and provide scalable, secure AI capabilities to address mission-centric challenges will be strongly positioned for future opportunities.
Looking Forward
While there is still uncertainty in how HHS will achieve such ambitious transformation plans, HHS’s AI strategy demonstrates a desire and need to make major strides in modernization to adapt to the rapidly changing AI-focused environment. By building a stronger data foundation, enabling shared AI infrastructure and prioritizing both the workforce and patient outcomes, the department is setting the stage for responsible and scalable AI adoption. For technology vendors and partners, this shift represents opportunity to support HHS as it accelerates innovation, enhances interoperability and embraces new tools that improve research, operations, and care delivery. Those who align with the OneHHS vision and provide flexible, secure and transparent solutions will be well positioned to be key industry partners in HHS’s transformation.
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About the Author:
Nikki Hamlin is a senior analyst on the TD SYNNEX Public Sector Market Intelligence team covering trends across the federal market. Nikki has more than 8 years of experience in federal procurement research and analysis, providing critical insights to support businesses in making informed decisions across civilian and defense agencies.
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