BIOBRIEF
ARPA H, HHS's health research arm, wants to replace rigid Phase 1/2/3 trials with SURPASS — Simulation augmented, Real time Platform Adaptive Seamless Trials — a continuous, platform adaptive design that reweights dosing in real time.
HHS is asking its health-research arm, ARPA-H, to replace the rigid Phase 1/2/3 sequence that has governed U.S. drug trials for decades with a single, continuous, AI-mediated design the agency says can run indefinitely and reach decisions faster.
The program is SURPASS, or Simulation-augmented, Real-time Platform Adaptive Seamless Trials, and HHS framed it as a five-year effort to merge predictive computational models, shared trial infrastructure, and common control groups into one perpetually running study. A "continuous inference engine" would steer dosing and eligibility in real time; an "agentic operations layer" would handle the logistics that today eat years and dollars.
A participant in a SURPASS-style trial would get faster access to whatever the model currently thinks is working, with less certainty at any given moment about which phase they are in. The program page points researchers to solicitation ARPA-H-SOL-26-164, with solution summaries due November 30, 2026 and full proposals due January 22, 2027.
STAT reports that the launch notice did not specify funding, an FDA posture, or what additional resources participants would receive. SURPASS is currently a call for research ideas, not an active pipeline.