The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) has released the Systems for Phenotypic Evaluation, Clinical Trajectories, Response, and Agency (SPECTRA) solicitation, a new Proactive Health Office program focused on improving how autism is understood, assessed, and supported across the lifespan. SPECTRA seeks multidisciplinary research and development efforts that can identify individual developmental and health trajectories, test targeted interventions, build privacy-preserving data infrastructure, and develop technologies that improve daily communication, function, and quality of life.
The opportunity, ARPA-H-SOL-26-163, will use Other Transaction agreements and has staggered Solution Summary deadlines across four technical areas. The first deadline is October 18, 2026, for Technology Area 4, which focuses on communication, quality of life, and embedded assessment technologies.
What Is ARPA-H SPECTRA?
SPECTRA is designed around a central challenge in autism research and care: people’s developmental, health, and functional experiences can differ substantially over time, yet current research and assessment systems often examine individual factors separately and rely heavily on clinical settings that capture only a limited view of daily life.
ARPA-H intends to study how genetic, biological, behavioral, environmental, infectious, medical, and developmental influences interact over time. The program will use that understanding to support earlier identification, more individualized interventions, and technologies that can measure and support people in the settings where they live, learn, work, and receive care.
SPECTRA’s stated goal is to improve health, communication, autonomy, daily function, and quality of life for autistic people across the lifespan. The program gives particular attention to people with high support needs, including people with profound autism, intellectual disability, and minimal or no reliable speech, who are often underrepresented in research and underserved by existing assessment tools.
Four SPECTRA Technical Areas
SPECTRA includes four connected technical areas. Teams may submit to one or more areas, but each submission must stand on its own for the technical area it addresses. ARPA-H expects performers to coordinate across technical areas once the program is underway.
The program is structured around an integrated model: TA1 analyzes trajectories, TA2 provides the population-scale data foundation, TA3 tests interventions, and TA4 develops technologies that can support people while generating more meaningful data outside the clinic.
Key Areas of Interest
Multi-Factor Trajectory Analysis
TA1 will examine the interactions among multiple factors that may shape developmental, health, and functional trajectories. Areas in scope include genetics and epigenetics, environmental and infectious exposures, medical influences, microbiome, immune and inflammatory processes, metabolism, prenatal and perinatal factors, behavior, development, communication, and social or service context.
ARPA-H is looking for approaches that can model higher-order, nonlinear, and time-dependent interactions. Single-factor association studies or collections of separate single-factor analyses will not meet the program’s intent.
Federated Data Infrastructure
TA2 seeks an operating federated network that enables participating organizations to analyze data across institutions without centralizing raw records. The infrastructure must support longitudinal, multimodal data, including clinical records, environmental exposures, multi-omics, sensor data, eye tracking, acoustic data, education data, and other relevant information.
By the end of the program, ARPA-H expects a network with at least 10 live nodes, cross-site query capability, published privacy architecture, common data elements, and an analytic environment that can support both SPECTRA performers and external researchers.
Precision Intervention Trials
TA3 will support adaptive, trajectory-informed intervention trials addressing co-occurring conditions and outcomes that can materially affect health and daily life. Examples include sleep disorders, seizures and epilepsy, gastrointestinal disease, chronic pain, anxiety and mood conditions, self-harm and behavioral crisis, immune and metabolic conditions, regression, and loss of function.
ARPA-H expects interventions to be tested under real-world conditions, including ordinary clinics, schools, and homes. Trials should assess health, communication, participation, independence, quality of life, family and caregiver outcomes, medication burden, and the durability of benefits over time.
Communication and Embedded Assessment Technology
TA4 is the first technical area open under the SPECTRA solicitation. It seeks technologies that people will use in their daily lives and that generate assessment data as a byproduct of use, rather than requiring separate clinical-style assessment tasks.
Areas of interest may include:
Wearables that assess sleep, movement, physiological state, or autonomic signals
Augmentative and alternative communication technologies
Speech and communication interfaces
Eye tracking on tablets and smartphones
Low-channel EEG suitable for use outside a research center
Camera-based analysis of movement, gait, and behavior
Immersive or virtual-environment tools that support participation and practice
Open, on-device speech, language, and multimodal models that better serve children and people with diverse communication profiles
TA4 technologies must demonstrate real-world utility, user-controlled consent, durable adoption, and functional benefit. ARPA-H is particularly interested in tools that improve daily life while enabling more ecologically valid measures of communication, independence, self-regulation, health, safety, learning, and social participation.
SPECTRA Solution Summary Deadlines
ARPA-H is using a phased release schedule. A Solution Summary is required before a full proposal may be submitted for every technical area. ARPA-H will respond by encouraging or discouraging a full proposal, and teams are advised to weigh that feedback seriously before investing in a full submission.
ARPA-H expects to issue a technical-area-specific amendment for TA1 and TA2 in late October and an amendment for TA3 in early December. Those amendments will include the relevant Solution Summary templates and additional requirements. Full proposal deadlines will be announced later.
Solution Summaries must be submitted through ARPA-H Solutions. Teams must register on the platform before they can submit materials, and late submissions may not be considered.
Who Can Apply?
ARPA-H is primarily seeking submissions from commercial performers, academic institutions, and nonprofit organizations. Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, government entities, and federal employees may not participate as prime or sub-performers.
ARPA-H will prioritize awards to entities performing the funded work in the United States. Non-U.S. organizations are encouraged to collaborate with a domestic entity, subject to the solicitation’s requirements. Active SAM.gov registration and a Unique Entity Identifier are required to receive an award.
Resource sharing is encouraged, but it is not required.
What ARPA-H Will Evaluate
ARPA-H will evaluate full proposals based on:
Overall scientific and technical merit
The proposer’s capabilities and relevant experience
Price and value analysis
Relevance to the ARPA-H mission
The agency will assess proposals independently rather than ranking them against one another. A proposal may be considered technically meritorious but still not advance to negotiation or receive an award.
ARPA-H also plans to conduct research security reviews for proposals selected for negotiation and will negotiate intellectual property and data rights with selected performers. The agency states that it intends to balance government-use needs with commercial transition of program outputs.
What Strong Teams Should Do Now
The SPECTRA opportunity is ambitious and tightly integrated across data, clinical research, technology development, and community engagement. The strongest teams will be clear about where they can make a differentiated contribution and how their work can interface with the broader program.
Potential performers should now:
Determine which technical area best fits their capability and evidence base.
Review the TA4 requirements immediately if developing assistive technology, wearable sensing, AAC, speech interfaces, digital phenotyping tools, or real-world assessment platforms.
Identify partners that add clinical, technical, data, analytical, regulatory, and lived-experience expertise.
Build a realistic plan for data access, community co-design, consent, privacy, and long-term implementation.
Show how a proposed tool or intervention improves real-world outcomes, not solely performance in a controlled research setting.
Confirm SAM.gov registration and UEI status before a full proposal opportunity is released.
Monitor SAM.gov and ARPA-H Solutions for technical-area-specific amendments, templates, FAQ updates, and full proposal requirements.
SPECTRA is looking for solutions that can improve understanding while also improving everyday life. For teams working at the intersection of autism research, digital health, assistive technology, precision medicine, data infrastructure, and clinical intervention, the program offers a significant new ARPA-H opportunity to build capabilities with lasting scientific and practical value.
EverGlade is a national advisory firm helping innovators and investors navigate the federal funding and financing ecosystem. We support companies across the funding lifecycle, from early-stage strategy through proposal development, negotiations, and program execution.
For additional information on where your capabilities could plug into this program, schedule a conversation with our team.
