INDEX Frequently Asked Questions

The programs are primarily advertised via ARPA-H's Vitals newsletter and ARPA-H's official LinkedIn profile. Please encourage your network to sign up for the Vitals newsletter to stay up-to-date on all of ARPA-H's programs and activities. Additionally, various forms of social media (e.g., Twitter/X) have been used to raise awareness. Announcements and presentations have also been made at topically related events, conferences, and gatherings.

Please carefully read the latest ISO, which can be found on INDEX’s SAM.gov site which contains all the necessary information.

Sign up using the method available on the corresponding ARPA-H event page. Proposer’s Day is scheduled for January 9, 2025. The event will be held at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center, in Seattle, WA beginning at 9 AM. Further details regarding the agenda of the day, including the link for online attendees, will be emailed prior to January 9th. 

The recording of INDEX’s Proposers' Day will be posted to INDEX’s webpage once processed. 

NOTE: The content in the INDEX Innovation Solutions Opening (ISO) supersedes any information presented in the recording. 

There will be no 1-on-1 meetings  at the Proposers' Day event.  Likewise, ARPA-H personnel--including program managers--are unable to comment or provide feedback on proposals (or sub-components of proposals) outside of the formal submission process.

No, in accordance with section 7 of the INDEX ISO, the cover page and Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) or Basis of Estimate (BOE) are excluded from the 4-page limit, but should still follow the formatting guidelines in Appendix A.

The INDEX ISO can be found on SAM.gov.  The latest version of the ISO supersedes any information presented in other publications, and sets forth the requirements for Full Proposals, the criteria for the evaluation, and instructions for the submission.   

The bundle of attachments for the INDEX program contains proposal submission templates and a Model Agreement (Other Transaction) with basic terms and conditions. The bundle is available on SAM.gov.

ARPA-H cannot provide formal approval or feedback on a specific technology, concept or idea prior to the submission of a Solution Summary. Refer to the language in the ISO to determine fitness. Feedback on the fit of specific technology will be provided following Solution Summary submission.

The Solution Summary for INDEX is due by January 28, 2025, at 5:00 PM ET.

As noted in the final paragraph of section 2.2 of the INDEX ISO:

“A submitting entity (submitting entity refers to a principal investigator or business, not a department within a university or a university) may participate in one single proposal. Letters of support do not count against this limit. If two abstracts/proposals are identified containing the same entity, one or both submissions may be discarded from review. Entirely non-overlapping teams from the same university may be part of different proposals.”

All eligible entities as defined in the INDEX ISO Section 3.1 may submit Solution Summaries.

Preliminary data are not required for the Solution Summary submission. Outside of guidance within the ISO, including Appendices, ARPA-H cannot advise proposers in terms of Solution Summary and/or Full Proposal strategy and content. Solution Summaries will be reviewed, and Full Proposals will be evaluated as described in the ISO Section 6. Proposers should prepare submissions accordingly. 

 Yes, a Solution Summary is required.

ARPA-H will review conforming Solution Summaries and provide written feedback. At a minimum, feedback will encourage or discourage submission of Full Proposal. Feedback will be sent to the administrative and technical points of contact noted on the Solution Summary cover page. Regardless of whether the proposer is encouraged to submit a proposal in response to the ISO, it is eligible to do so. Solution Summaries must be submitted in accordance with the requirements of INDEX ISO Section 4 and Solution Summary feedback must be received prior to submission of a proposal.

Responses and decisions will be sent to the email recorded in the submission system once the review process is complete. Additional details and instructions will be shared at that time.

Full Proposals are evaluated in accordance with the criteria and processes specified in the ISO (see Section 5). In addition to the general criteria, carefully read the ISO to ensure that program-specific requirements and recommendations are satisfied.

Full Proposals will be evaluated by Government Reviewers who may be ARPA-H PMs or qualified personnel from other Government Organizations and Agencies who are deemed proficient in the pertinent research areas of the solicitation.

Letters of Opportunity/Intent are not required, instead you will be required to submit a Solution Summary, which functions as an LOI.

The INDEX program aims for innovative platforms that are developed to achieve commercial success through widespread usage and, therefore, expects relevant IP to be protected.  Intellectual property right provisions specific to the INDEX program can be found in section 6.1.1 of the INDEX ISO.

Please use the HHS guidelines for salary rate limitations. Congress has legislatively mandated a limitation on direct salary for individuals under NIH grant and cooperative agreement awards. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (Public Law 117-328) restricts the amount of direct salary to Executive Level II of the Federal Executive pay scale. Effective January 1, 2023, the salary limitation is $221,900. This means that the maximum salary for any one person in one year, for any labor category, and any level of effort is $221,900.

The Solution Summary requires a rough estimated cost for the overall proposed solution (including cost for any sub-awardees), while the Full Proposal requires more detail and needs to include at minimum a planned budget for Product Sponsor involvement.

A typical teaming organization includes a lead member and an administrative core to facilitate management and execution of proposed work. Please refer to the Business Innovation Division talk during the CATALYST Proposers' Day Presentation, approximately at the 1:02:30 mark, for more details as the same requirements will apply for INDEX.

Proposals must cover all TAs. Proposals which do not cover all TAs will not be considered for an award. 

Pre-award costs will not be reimbursed unless a pre-award agreement is negotiated prior to award.

Reviews are done after the submission deadline. There is no benefit to submitting early.

The budget should reflect the most technical and reasonable estimate of how to complete the tasks. Budget and period of performance depend on the specific project. Interested parties are encouraged to review recent ARPA-H awards to get a sense of the general size and length of ARPA-H awards, with the caveat that all awards are ultimately project dependent and subject to negotiations. Interested parties are encouraged to review the INDEX attachment bundles to understand the cost information and format for ARPA-H solution summaries and requests for proposals. Multiple awards are anticipated under this ISO for Phase 0 only; however, the number of awards selected will depend on the quality of the proposals received and the availability of funds. 

The Government reserves the right to select for negotiation all, some, one, or none of the proposals received in response to this ISO. If warranted, portions of resulting awards may be segregated into options. In the event that the Government desires to award only portions of a proposal, negotiations will commence upon selection notification. The Government reserves the right to fund proposals in phases with options for continued work, as applicable.  

Legal documents are not required at the proposal submission stage.

Yes, commercial vendors and consultants are acceptable. However, any entity performing research in an investigator role is expected to be a team member.

MTDC is federal financial assistance (i.e., grants and cooperative agreements) terminology.  INDEX awards will be made as Other Transactions (OT) and OTs are not subject to the specific laws, regulations, and policies applicable to federal financial assistance awards. However, the Government expects proposing teams to follow their standard financial procedures when proposing to the INDEX program.

The information will be made available in SAM.gov alongside the INDEX ISO.

Please use this link to submit an update to the teaming profile. 

Yes, non-U.S. entities are allowed to submit proposals for consideration. Non-U.S. entities are encouraged to collaborate with domestic U.S. entities. 

Key members of the Proposer's team should be identified as early as possible (e.g., Solution Summary). Failure to identify key personnel (e.g., Project Manager) and/or partners may impact the Government's evaluation. Product Sponsors need to be identified by 12 months after the project start. Proposers are encouraged to provide as many specific details as are available at the time of submission, while considering page limitations at each submission stage.

Documentation should demonstrate that the FFRDC has a unique capability without which their solution is unachievable and that the proposer team has exhausted all other options. This will be reviewed by ARPA-H to determine if inclusion is necessary. See INDEX ISO Section 3.1.1 for more details.

There is no specific preference for this aspect of the proposer team. Note that the central objective of INDEX is the development of a sustained digital platform. TA1 details the requirement that proposer teams include a strategy for commercialization or otherwise enabled sustainable access for the INDEX platform.

ARPA-H does not facilitate team matching. Lightning talk slides and teaming requests are available for proposers to utilize for teaming. Interested parties are encouraged to use the ARPA-H teaming interface.

No, a proposer team does not require a formal agreement during the Solution Summary phase.

The composition of the performer team is left to the determination of the individuals/entities submitting/developing proposals. Ultimately, the performer team/entity is tasked with fulfilling the specifications documented in the ISO and meeting the designated metrics and milestones. We anticipate that multiple entities will have to team to fulfill the requirements of INDEX. 

It is expected that INDEX will become a self-sustaining platform by the end of the period of performance. Proposer teams may include data providers and data curation firms who could then receive INDEX program funding. This information and rationale should be included in the proposal documents. 

As specified in the ISO, the term “new providers” corresponds to data providers “that do not already have an agreement with the proposer prior to the period of performance”. For example, if a data aggregator is part of the team and already has a working relationship with Hospital X, Hospital X is not a new provider. 

For the purposes of TA1 requirements, that single institution is one provider, even if they provide both pathology and radiology images.

For the purpose of TA3 requirements, we understand that some health networks have multiple physical locations and even multiple IT infrastructures. If you connect a large health network that spans multiple states, it may count as multiple entities on a case-by-case basis.

Yes. Unless indicated otherwise in the ISO (i.e., written as “suggested”), the INDEX program metrics in the ISO are requirements for the proposed projects. Proposals that do not meet the metrics will be evaluated accordingly.  Proposers are expected to define success metrics appropriate for and specific to their proposal and technology stack.    Once agreed upon in negotiation and with approval of the Program Manager, the proposers are accountable to the final metrics.

Proposals should not assume provision of any Government Furnished Information (GFI). The Government may provide GFI, but the specific GFI would be negotiated after a proposal is selected for award negotiations (i.e., a proposal must stand on its own without assumptions and conditions related to GFI).  More broadly, the recruitment of data providers is envisioned to be one of the primary endeavors of the INDEX performer group (See TA 3 of the ISO).

The INDEX platform cannot implement access charges for data that is available for free elsewhere in exactly the same form and with the exact same informational content. Service-related charges should be included in the proposal documents with all other costs and metrics. This provision does not preclude the offering of a curated and/or augmented version of such data followed and charging (reasonably, in accordance with associated costs) for that derivative data.

Animal data should be clear and unambiguously marked. Non-human data will not contribute to the satisfaction of the relevant metrics and milestones. 

Per section 2.3 of the INDEX ISO: “Initially, INDEX will focus on cancer digital pathology data, one type of radiology data, and surgical procedure videos.”  Performers are encouraged to catalog and facilitate the exchange of other data modalities, potentially, as a means of increasing revenue.  However, the required INDEX metrics and milestones only reflect the data modalities specified above. 

We consider all characteristics of proposed solutions when conducting our evaluations. ARPA-H cannot provide feedback on the content of a solution summary or proposal prior to submission.

Sections 2.2.2.5.1 and 2.2.3.1 address patient consent. 

INDEX is expected to continue to operate without ARPA-H funding at the conclusion of the period of performance; one member of the performer team must be an entity with the ability and intent to run INDEX after the period of performance.