SURPASS

Simulation-augmented, Real-time Platform Adaptive Seamless Trials

Solicitation Notice: This program has an open funding opportunity. Complete opportunity details and application documents are posted to the System for Award Management (SAM.gov). Stay on this page for an overview of the program and its opportunity. Or, navigate directly to the solicitation posting (ARPA-H-SOL-26-164).

What if we could shorten clinical trials from taking more than a decade to less than four years?

The Problem

Today, clinical development of drugs and biologics often takes more than a decade, costs $1-$2billion, and fails 90% of the time. As a result, promising treatments never reach patients because development is too costly and lengthy to remain financially viable.
The current paradigm is fragmented and inefficient, relying on separate clinical phases, repeated trial startups, static designs informed by guesswork rather than data, and duplicated operational infrastructure. This approach slows evidence generation, increases cost, places unnecessary burden on participants, and limits the ability to adapt as new information emerges during a trial.

The Solution

The Simulation-augmented, Real-time Platform Adaptive Seamless Trials (SURPASS) program aims to modernize today’s clinical trials so they can evaluate drugs and biologics faster, at lower cost, and with fewer participants than conventional approaches.
SURPASS seeks to build perpetual, adaptive platform trials that combine predictive computational models, shared trial infrastructure, common control groups, and real-time analysis to enable earlier, smarter decision making that will help speed effective drugs to patients.
If successful, SURPASS will help patients get promising treatments sooner by reducing the time, cost, and patient burden of clinical trials while enabling faster decisions about what works and what does not.

Only ARPA-H Can…

Bring together expertise across biostatistics, artificial intelligence (AI), clinical operations, regulatory science, and patient-centered trial design to build new standards and shared infrastructure.
Take on the technical and regulatory risk that individual institutions may be unwilling or not have the resources to shoulder alone.

Solicitation Overview

Solicitation Notice ID: ARPA-H-SOL-26-164

To achieve the goals of this program ARPA-H is seeking ground-breaking ideas from cross-disciplinary teams in statistics, AI, and clinical trial design, operations, and regulation. Teams will pursue three coordinated technical areas to build faster trials with fewer patients, develop a continuous inference engine for faster decisions, and create an agentic operations layer to reduce time and cost. See solicitation for complete details.

Key Dates:

Informational Webinar - October 15, 2026 (Register by Oct 13, 2026)
This is the first of two optional events for the proposer community to learn more about this opportunity, ask questions, and make connections. Registration required, see Special Notice ARPA-H-SN-26-164 for event details.
Proposers' Day Event - November 6, 2026 (Register by Oct 31, 2026)
This is the second of two optional events for the proposer community to learn more about this opportunity, ask questions, and make connections. Registration required, see Special Notice ARPA-H-SN-26-164 for event details.
Solution Summary Due - November 30, 2026
Submitting a summary is required to move forward with this opportunity. After submitting a summary, await feedback from ARPA-H before proceeding.
Proposal Due - January 22, 2027
Required templates for the proposal submission will be provided at the time of Solution Summary feedback. Reference solicitation for more details.

Interested in this opportunity? Download the official solicitation documents which are posted on SAM.gov. The documents outline complete opportunity details including requirements, evaluation criteria, eligibility information, and provide application templates with detailed instructions on how to apply. When ready, you will submit applications to the ARPA-H Solutions site. Sign-in required.

Access Solicitation Documents Submit an Application