The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) launched the ADVOCATE program, the world’s first initiative to build an FDA-authorized clinical agentic AI system for cardiovascular care. The project operates with a first-year commitment of up to $33.7 million and a total four-year budget of $62.7 million. Its goal is to provide around-the-clock heart care autonomous assistance to patients, addressing the critical shortage of cardiologists across nearly half of U.S. counties. [1, 2, 3]
The program has selected specialized teams categorized into three Technical Areas (TAs):
- TA1 (Patient-Facing AI Agents): Developed by Atman Health, Tempus AI, and Updoc to autonomously interact with and monitor heart failure patients between healthcare visits. [1]
- TA2 (Supervisory AI Agent): Designed by Stanford University to continuously monitor the TA1 agents, providing a real-time safety and auditing layer to detect unsafe recommendations. [1]
- TA3 (Scalable Implementation): Led by Duke University and Kaiser Permanente to design and execute real-world deployments across multiple health systems and Electronic Health Records (EHRs). [1]
The program includes the FDA throughout its lifecycle to establish regulatory and safety frameworks, alongside Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) acting as an independent external evaluator. [1]
Read article: DOWNLOAD
References
- Primary Source: Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Official Announcement. [1]
- Program Title: Agentic AI-EnableD CardioVascular CAre TransfOrmation (ADVOCATE). [1]
- Key Officials Cited:
- Official URL Referenced: ARPA-H Program Page. [1]