Proactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience
The Big Question
What if we had therapies to extend healthspan and prevent the onset of age-related diseases?
The Problem
Despite recent increases in average lifespan across the U.S., there has not been a corresponding increase in healthspan – the amount of time a person remains in good health and free from long-term disease or disability. Currently, 80% of all adults over the age of 65 have at least one chronic condition, and 30% of the same population are considered “pre-frail,” which is associated with a higher risk of mortality in the next five years. Americans with symptoms of aging such as fatigue, reduced cognitive ability, pain, reduced hearing and vision, and sleep disruption have very few treatment options. With this aging demographic expected to only increase, health care costs will rise significantly.
The Solution
In response to these issues, the PROactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience (PROSPR) program aims to identify biochemical and physiological markers and develop assessment tools that will allow researchers to better understand and target the underlying causes of age-related disease. To achieve this goal, PROSPR will pioneer in-home data collection and clinical trial protocols that can assess age-associated health outcomes in just three years instead of decades of study, accelerating the availability of new therapies. If successful, PROSPR will build a new therapeutic industry with interventions focused on maintaining health during aging.
Why ARPA-H?
A revolutionary approach to extending the healthspan of people across the U.S. requires a comfort with calculated research that only a funding agency such as ARPA-H can provide.
Rare Disease AI/ML for Precision Integrated Diagnostics
The Big Question
What if we could end the rare disease diagnostic odyssey?
The Problem
Collectively, rare diseases are far from rare — more than 10,000 unique conditions affect over 350 million people worldwide, including one in ten Americans. The lengthy diagnostic “odyssey” endured by patients with a rare disease lasts six years on average but can extend for decades. Diagnostic delays stem from multiple factors, including overlapping symptoms, low disease incidence, and limited specialist expertise. It's estimated that half of all individuals with a rare disease remain undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, leading to inappropriate care, irreversible disease progression, and rising medical costs.
The Solution
The Rare Disease AI/ML for Precision Integrated Diagnostics (RAPID) program aims to transform the diagnosis of rare and ultra-rare diseases by developing highly accurate AI-based detection models. RAPID seeks to develop provider-facing tools that prioritize data interoperability and integration into existing clinical workflows, ensuring scalability across health care organizations. RAPID will also design cost effective, direct-to-patient systems that can be remotely deployed to help individuals and their families detect rare diseases at home or in non-clinical settings and route them toward appropriate medical support. To catalyze model development, RAPID aims to integrate data from a fragmented landscape, building the largest curated dataset of longitudinal rare disease patient data that is optimized for training and benchmarking advanced diagnostic algorithms. If successful, RAPID will expand access to rare disease expertise and help patients and health care providers reach an accurate diagnosis in a fraction of the time it takes today.
Why ARPA-H
RAPID leverages ARPA-H's ability to catalyze innovation in underserved areas like rare disease diagnosis.