The Project What are we working on?

Quick Summary

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is interested in exploring the use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) by Veterans. These modalities represent therapies that are adjunct, or alternative, to standard treatments, but have been studied less and currently are not widely used. Veterans Affairs requires a system to help track and analyze these modalities in order to better understand Veterans’ use of them and to begin to characterize their perceived efficacy.

The Complementary and Alternative Medicine Registry will allow medical providers to enter information about CAM treatments that are being provided to Veterans. The system stores this information and allows program analysts and policy-makers to retrieve it in an intuitive and user friendly fashion. The system will be used to help guide the development of research and clinical guidelines relating to CAMs.