MIGHTY 25: Indra Sandal’s innovation is saving veterans’ lives

As the Chief of Innovation for James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital and Clinics in Tampa, Florida, Dr. Indra Sandal is at the helm of building a better experience for veterans. Sandal is working hard to meet every veteran's needs through positive changes and innovative ideas.

Her passion for the military community began at an early age; Sandal is the daughter of a veteran.

"I grew up in India, and my dad was in the Indian Air Force and served for 35 years," she shared. "Three things I learned very early in my years in my family were discipline, determination and dedication."

Though her father has since passed, Sandal said his lessons are at the forefront of everything she's accomplished and continues to pursue.

As she began to pursue her PhD in biotechnology at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in Palampur, India, Sandal had the chance to meet the Dalai Lama and attend a lesson at Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, India. Her goal at the end of her education was to travel, become a scientist and heal the world.

Her genetic and genomic research outcomes included 17 secured patents, 14 peer-reviewed journal publications as lead author, three book chapters and more than 50 conference presentations worldwide.

Sandal then moved to the U.S. to serve as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and later as a research scientist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. It was there that she met her future husband, Dr. Satish Annadata, who is now the chief of staff at the VA Finger Lakes Health Care System in upstate New York.

"If you are in research, your target is to become a professor, and that was my target. So I went to the University of Utah, joined as an assistant professor in infectious disease and started working on a cure for patients with cystic fibrosis," Sandal shared. "It was always in the back of my mind that I wanted to come back to the VA to serve veterans because of my father. One thing that is important to note is that to work in the VA, you have to be a U.S. citizen."

India does not allow dual citizenship, so in 2013, Sandal gave up her citizenship of her birth country to become an American and devote the rest of her life to its warfighters.

Eager to realize her dream of working for the VA, Sandal applied to positions across the U.S. and landed at the Memphis VA Medical Center as a research biologist. Despite finding a meaningful role there, Sandal shared that she felt she could do more for veterans if she knew more about the management and business side of health care. It was a commitment she shared with her husband, who was a physician at a VA hospital in Iowa City at the time. They both graduated with an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 2017 after commuting for two years from Memphis and Iowa to Chicago. After graduation, Sandal joined the VA innovation side of health care.

"For three years, I worked and developed the innovation program in Memphis—not just for Tennessee but for the whole delta, which spanned five states," Sandal explained.

In 2021, she was selected to be a fellow for the VHA Innovation Ecosystem and collaborated with Uber Health to provide rides to veterans for their medical appointments to reduce missed appointments, improve veteran experience and achieve cost savings for the VA health care system.

"Transportation is the largest barrier to access to care for veterans; around 1.8 million appointments are missed yearly because of transportation issues. The VA does provide transportation options from the Veterans Transportation Program office, hospitals, volunteer services and reimbursement to veterans, but there is no transportation access after 4 p.m. on weekdays and no options on weekends," Sandal said. "For example, after a veteran is discharged from the hospital, if the family member doesn't show up to provide a ride home, then the patient has to stay in the hospital and cannot be officially discharged. If another veteran needs to be seen and that bed is taken by a veteran without transportation, it creates long wait times, and a veteran waiting in the ER has to be sent to community care instead."

This issue was the basis of her project, ensuring veterans could get to the care they needed.

In January 2022, Sandal launched the VHA-Uber Health Connect Initiative in 10 VAMCs as a pilot phase. Since the launch, the program is now available in 101 VAMCs, has completed over 450,000 free rides, served over 50,000 veterans and covered more than 6 million total miles traveled. Surveys have indicated that 82% of veterans wouldn't have made their appointments without this service, and 90% would recommend the service to fellow veterans for health care appointments. This initiative has saved the VA over $250 million by reducing 140,000 missed appointments, and plans are underway to make the program available at every VAMC by 2025.

Sandal is also hard at work to add another important element to the VHA-Uber Health Connect project. Next up? Prescription delivery. "We are exploring at this time Uber RX, which is a delivery of prescription medication to veterans within two hours," she said.

Joining the Tampa VAMC in January 2023 as Chief of Innovation, Sandal continues to drive forward-thinking solutions. "I joined this role one and a half years ago with the goal of establishing a national center for innovation in Tampa to create an ecosystem of public-private collaboration for people, community and technology development to deliver transformative health care innovations to veterans," Sandal said.

One of those initiatives is the establishment of Veterans Health – MIT Hacking Medicine, a public-private collaborative event utilizing advanced technology to address pressing needs for veterans, reflecting her ongoing mission to harness innovation for better care.

The 2024 hackathon convened 213 hackers from several industries, including clinical, tech and academic backgrounds, who received training and coaching in artificial intelligence, problem definition and presentation coaching, generating 39 innovations (including nine winning teams) to bring the best and soonest care to veterans, address veteran suicide and ensure the VHA is hiring faster and more competitively. All the winning teams from the hackathon will participate in a Make-a-Thon this fall to begin converting their ideas into reality.

Sandal is also a faculty and innovation advisor for MIT linQ Catalyst to recruit and mentor VA employees' innovation projects in the MIT Catalyst Fellowship.

On a personal note, Sandal and Annadata recently bought a farm. "Outside of our careers in health care, we're venturing into entrepreneurship. We bought a vineyard with 86 acres of land in upstate New York, right across from Keuka Lake. The previous owner called it the Purple Foot Farm, and we're rebranding it to the Purple Parrot as a nod to Northwestern and the posters that hung in the Allen Center bedrooms when we were students. This is giving back to Kellogg for preparing us to live our dreams. We're continuing to develop it in the hopes that people will come and stay to enjoy the beauty of the vineyards, as we turn it into a working winery and eventually create our own wines."

Her career serving veterans is only getting started, Sandal said. She also had words of encouragement for others looking to serve those who have raised their right hand for our country.

"Whatever you do, let it be mission-oriented," she said. "And lastly, dream big; no idea is small and nothing is impossible."