Case Study: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs achieves nationwide personnel accountability and rapid mass notification with BlackBerry AtHoc

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs - Customer Case Study

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the nation’s largest healthcare provider with roughly 700,000 personnel across hundreds of medical centers and clinics, needed an enterprise-wide, secure system to rapidly notify and account for dispersed staff. Key challenges included integrating with the U.S. Navy’s PAAS, protecting sensitive PII behind the firewall, meeting federal and healthcare regulations, supporting multiple redundant alert channels, and ensuring continuity of operations during emergencies.

VA implemented BlackBerry AtHoc’s Enterprise Edition integrated with Navy PAAS to create VA-PAS: a private‑cloud, multi‑tenant, IP‑based mass notification and two‑way personnel accountability system. The solution delivers real‑time alerts across desktops, phones, mobile devices, email and SMS, provides full failover and reporting, initially protects 400,000 personnel (scalable to 700,000), produced enterprise cost savings, achieved national adoption and regulatory compliance, and was judged “Best in Class” in the National Level Exercise.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs