The Veterans Affairs Department has launched a competition among its employees to see who can come up with the best ideas for how to use health IT to improve the agency's healthcare practices and treatments.

VA will choose 100 of the ideas and invite their authors to submit full proposals.

Federal and contract employees of the Veterans Health Administration and the department's Office of Information and Technology have until Feb. 21 to  submit their ideas, comment on them and vote on the best proposals, said Gerald Cross, acting VA under secretary for health.

Under the terms of the contest, employees may enter health IT ideas in a variety of categories, such as engaging veterans in their care, helping medical providers, increasing transparency and improving workflow.

"Many components of our VistA electronic health records system originated in innovations from our healthcare workforce," he said in an announcement Feb. 5.

VA's health IT system has always been a collaboration among its healthcare users and IT staff, he added.