Resilient Systems Office: Office-Wide Innovative Solutions Opening for Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health

This ISO seeks solution summary and proposal submissions for projects that fall within the scope of the ARPA-H mission Resilient Systems Office (RSO). RSO’s interest areas will address systemic challenges across the healthcare and public health landscape by investing in cutting-edge technologies that address long-standing gaps in the quality, efficacy, and consistent availability of care.

Aspects of today’s health and public health systems remain fragile due to systemic challenges, which include rising healthcare costs, inadequate healthcare coverage for significant populations, outdated infrastructure, and health disparities among different demographic groups. Acute challenges, such as hospital closures, supply chain disruptions, staffing shortages, cyber-attacks, public health crises, and the emergence of new diseases, further exacerbate existing fragilities, making it more difficult to maintain high standards of care. These challenges are compounded by the fact that systems remain fragmented, hindering the ability to gain comprehensive insights, make informed decisions, develop tailored interventions, and share critical health information between stakeholders.

RSO seeks solution summaries and proposals that drive innovations to enhance the adaptability, reliability, and interoperability of the health ecosystem. Of interest are innovations that foster flexibility and enable adaptation to system stressors, so that people and systems remain well-positioned to deliver high-quality care and improve health outcomes. The following interest areas categorize the ground-breaking research we seek to support:

Sociotechnical System Innovation:

• Innovate user-centric digital health tools, platforms, technologies, and intervention models that improve outcomes across the health continuum, including prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of physical, mental, and behavioral health.

• Approaches to build trust in the healthcare system and distribute high-quality health guidance in an understandable manner that improves patient outcomes.

• Novel real-time measurement tools to track health outcomes, evaluate post-market performance of new interventions, and enable convergence on the most effective strategies to improve the quality of care, especially for underserved communities.

• Other population centered innovations to create more resilient communities and subpopulations. Innovations might include aggregate improvements to quality of care and better physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes for the health ecosystem.

Health Ecosystem Integration:

• Novel ways to collect, protect, secure, integrate, analyze, communicate, and present health data, including but not limited to advances in privacy, cyber security, artificial intelligence with enhanced patient safety properties, low-code or no-code technologies, semantic approaches, and rapid integration techniques.

• Strategies and technologies to leverage homes, community centers, pharmacies, and other accessible locations to enable new modalities of high-quality care, expand the reach of clinical research, or integrate end-user feedback to rapidly iterate prototype designs.

• Approaches to strengthen the connectivity and interoperability of health data and devices to 5 enable the safe, secure, and seamless exchange of information among healthcare providers, researchers, and stakeholders.

• Other novel approaches to increase the interoperability of health-related systems in support of improved health outcomes and enhanced transparency across the health ecosystem.

Adaptive & Antifragile Solutions:

• Creative approaches to enhance the stability and dependability of the health ecosystem through new adaptive paradigms, methods that anticipate and mitigate disruptions before they occur, and enhancements to emergency response.

• Approaches that enable health infrastructure to rapidly integrate information from new sensors; create decision support tools; adapt supply chains, manufacturing, and logistics; and better leverage the workforce during public health emergencies.

• Novel methods to engineer resilient tissues, microbiomes, and biophysical systems to combat disease or maintain health.

• Other novel approaches to enhance adaptability and reduce fragility within the health ecosystem.

Proposals are expected to use innovative approaches to enable revolutionary advances in science, technology, systems, or methodology. Specifically excluded are proposals that represent an evolutionary or incremental advance in the state of the art or technology that has reached the clinical trial stage. Additionally, proposals directed towards policy changes, traditional education and training, or center coordination, formation, or development, and construction of physical infrastructure are outside the scope of the ARPA-H mission