Curie Brief
Turn on cookies to sign in
Signing in saves your progress to your Curie account. We can only do that with cookies on — turn them on to continue.
News
The federal government is funding a bold new push to put AI on cardiac care teams. ARPA-H awarded $62.7M across six teams — including Kaiser Permanente, Duke, and Stanford — to build an FDA-authorized, autonomous AI tool for heart failure patients. The goal: fill critical cardiology gaps, especially in rural America where nearly half of counties lack a practicing cardiologist.
The federal government is making a major bet on AI-powered cardiac care. ARPA-H — the HHS branch focused on high-risk, high-reward health research — has awarded $62.7 million in contracts to six teams tasked with building an FDA-authorized, autonomous AI agent for heart failure patients. Recipients include Kaiser Permanente, Duke University, and Stanford, alongside health AI companies Atman Health, Tempus AI, and Updoc.
The initiative, called the Advocate program, is structured around three focus areas: building a patient-facing AI agent, creating a supervisory AI to catch unsafe recommendations, and developing a deployment strategy to scale the tech across real health systems. The AI is designed to provide 24/7 autonomous cardiovascular support between clinical visits — fielding patient questions independently and looping in human providers only when needed.
By the Numbers:
Why it matters: Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., and rural communities are hit hardest by the shortage of cardiologists. If successful, this program won't just improve cardiac care — it could establish the first-ever FDA regulatory pathway for agentic clinical AI, reshaping how autonomous tools are approved and deployed across all of medicine.
