If you represent a health IT firm doing business or planning to do business with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the following break-down of VA’s fiscal year 2011 budget is designed to be a roadmap of where to consider focusing your resources. This analysis is based on VA’s fiscal year 2011 congressional budget submission.

To be successful in this market, be prepared to develop a partnership with the VA, particularly with frontline department personnel who are looking for new approaches to  producing greater healthcare convenience, quality and satisfaction for the nation’s veterans.

Medical IT systems ($1.275 billion)

The largest component of the VA’s FY 2011 medical IT systems budget – totaling a whopping $928.8 million or 73 percent of this category – is for improving the delivery of quality healthcare by providing a secure, reliable health IT infrastructure for all VA medical facilities.

For day-to-day IT operations, the infrastructure category consists of life-cycle equipment maintenance and replacement, wireless networks, software licenses, servers, desktops, laptops, smart phones, printers, scanners, network support and