Year in Review: Roar 2025

At Blue Tiger, we hire kind, caring, and fun people who are incredibly good at what they do. You don’t have to believe us; feel free to ask around. You’ll find that Blue Tiger folks have an outsized impact on outcomes and their teams. We lead by example, caring deeply about our users, our craft, and our teammates. As we reflect on the work we did in 2025, allow us to roar.

Simplifying how Veterans and their families ask VA questions

Ask VA | Department of Veterans Affairs | Oddball

We helped make it easier for Veterans and their families to ask questions about VA benefits and healthcare. Blue Tiger provided user research and design work for the redesign of Ask VA for VA.gov. Our work simplified the submission process, improved accessibility, and established consistency with VA.gov standards – all while working seamlessly with existing backend systems.

“Veterans can now submit support questions to VA through a more accessible, usable, and integrated experience. This is one small step for Ask VA, one giant leap for Veteran digital customer support on VA.gov.” – Government Partner

Building a modern, EHR-agnostic Lung Cancer Screening tool for VA

Clinical Decision Support | Department of Veterans Affairs | Coforma

We streamlined and improved system performance for VA’s Lung Cancer Screening platform, a modern clinical decision support tool that helps coordinators nationwide track lung cancer screenings more efficiently. By streamlining workflows, improving system performance on critical queries, and creating mock datasets for cancer diagnosis scenarios, we helped ensure this EHR-agnostic tool continues to support Veteran care. Blue Tiger provides full-stack software engineering on this team.

Leveraging AI to summarize patient records and support Veteran care

AI Pilot | Department of Veterans Affairs | Coforma

We helped pilot a generative AI chat tool that summarizes patient records for clinical staff. This included building VA’s first Model Context Protocol server connecting to the VistaA EHR system, enabling large language models to access patient notes and medical records to support clinicians preparing for patient appointments. Blue Tiger provided product management on this team.

“…Amazing to see the way the team was able to change direction and end the year delivering a tool that is on the cutting edge of genAI practices today, and hasn’t been done at VA yet.” – Government Partner

Improving transparency and observability on a critical Medicaid system

Medicaid Drug Program | Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services | Coforma

We brought clarity to a critical federal system that processes billions of dollars in annual drug rebates. Before our work, this system was a “black box” with little documentation. To ensure accountability, we transformed previously unexplainable calculations into transparent, documented workflows. And to improve efficiency, we automated workflows that previously took hours to run and were prone to user error. Blue Tiger provides full-stack software engineering, data engineering, and data analysis on this team. 

“The organization, teamwork, knowledge, and chemistry this team has and shows leaves us speechless most days …” – Government Partner

Enhancing the quality and maintainability of six critical Medicaid Data Collection Tools

Medicaid Data Collection Tools | Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services | Coforma

We enhanced quality and maintainability across three critical data collection tools by increasing test coverage, optimizing CI/CD pipelines to a quarter of previous runtime, and establishing reusable patterns that reduce development time. We wrote technical and product guides for the development teams, stakeholders. We also established content management processes to make updates easier to manage. Blue Tiger provides software engineering and content design on this team. 

“That kind of on-it-ness is really rare, and I’m super grateful.” – Vendor Partner

Simplifying the sign-in experience on VA.gov

Identity Services | Department of Veterans Affairs | Oddcore

We helped migrate millions of Veterans to Login.gov and ID.me, two modern, secure sign-in options. Through extensive user research and iterative prototyping, we reduced the number of sign-in options from four to two, decreasing cognitive load and confusion. Our efforts included designing customized experiences, creating an interstitial page to convert Veterans to modern accounts, and collaborating with VA staff to support in-person account transition events. Blue Tiger provides content design and user research on this team.

Third Space: Bringing people together

We need more spaces in civic technology that aren’t conferences, happy hours, or networking events. This year, we started hosting meetups that bring people together for activities like making zines or making pictures of pears with collage. Our intention is to create community spaces that are distinct from work and home, where individuals can connect with others, build relationships, and engage in creative activities. 

Blue Tiger delivers user research, content design, product management, software engineering, and data engineering and analysis expertise to mission-critical programs, consistently earning recognition from partners for our technical excellence and collaborative approach.

This report was prepared by Blue Tiger. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not represent an official statement, policy, or endorsement by the Department of Veterans Affairs or the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.