HHS launches SURPASS to accelerate clinical trials with AI — SkimNews
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- HHS announced new initiatives aimed at speeding up clinical trials by incorporating more AI and computational models and moving away from sharply delineated trial phases.
- The centerpiece SURPASS program — "Simulation-augmented, Real-time Platform Adaptive Seamless Trials" — is a five-year effort that will begin accepting proposals later this fall.
- SURPASS will solicit "ground-breaking ideas from cross-disciplinary teams in statistics, AI, and clinical trial design, operations, and regulation," per the program's website.
- ARPA-H (Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health) will administer the program within HHS.
- The initial announcement did not specify funding levels for the new initiatives or detail whether participants would be offered additional flexibility or resources.
Why it matters: By omitting funding amounts and participant-flexibility details in the initial announcement, HHS leaves the program's real scale undefined — researchers and trial sponsors can't yet tell whether SURPASS will translate into meaningful new resources for AI-driven trial design or merely signal a procedural shift in how trials are structured.
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