Celebrating One Year of the Investor Catalyst Hub!

By Chelsea Schiller, Director, ARPA-H Investor Catalyst Hub

Just over a year ago, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) launched the Investor Catalyst (IC) Hub as part of ARPANET-H—a nationwide health innovation network. The IC Hub is on a mission to support ARPA-H program development.

We’ve been busy! Although I’m excited to jump into our second year, I wanted to reflect on our first year’s highlights and give credit to those who have contributed to our success.

Reflecting on Year One

Our first year was all about growth.

We built a diverse network from coast to coast with many of the brightest minds and leaders in health innovation. From 10 inaugural members to nearly 600 members today, our ever growing network spans the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. It represents nearly two dozen sectors and service areas. Of our members, almost 250 are designated small businesses, more than 150 have been operating for fewer than five years, more than 100 are women-owned, and more than 75 are minority-owned. This is important to us as we work to serve as the front door to the agency for our broader network, but most importantly for underrepresented organizations, companies, and institutions that haven’t previously received federal funding.

Like the IC Hub, ARPA-H is still a young agency. In only two and a half years, ARPA-H has launched 19 programs and has allocated $1.5 billion for transformative health solutions. Our growth is intertwined, and as ARPA-H continues to build its portfolio of projects and investments, the IC Hub will follow.

As I mentioned in my interview with the Boston Business Journal in the spring, the IC Hub is best positioned to support ARPA-H program development by leveraging its network—and our hub’s network is now bigger, more diverse, and more capable of providing the expertise, solutions, and support than ever before.

We are excited to celebrate the 30 IC Hub members who have already received a total of more than $936 million in funding from ARPA-H. Last month, Cellino was awarded $25 million from ARPA-H to support the NExt-generation Biomanufacturing ULtra-scalable Approach (NEBULA) project.

Milestones and Achievements

The IC Hub has, so far, directly supported 21 ARPA-H programs and Mission Offices. Our team led successful communications campaigns to build visibility for ARPA-H programs, connected programs to network experts and hosted ARPA-H programs in our network webinar series to create linkages between ARPA-H programs and potential proposers. Most notably, within our first six months, we launched our first sprint and first network survey in collaboration with ARPA-H.

ARPA-H Sprint for Women’s Health

I was honored to be in the room when ARPA-H officially launched the Sprint for Women’s Health with Dr. Jill Biden in February. This sprint is a funding initiative conducted in collaboration with the IC Hub that committed $100 million toward transformative research and development in women’s health. ARPA-H received an unprecedented number of submissions from 45 states; Washington, D.C.; and 34 countries—making it clear that there is an overwhelming demand for solutions to women’s health challenges. We are excited to announce the Sprint for Women’s Health performers this month—the finish line to an incredible funding round and the starting line to accelerating breakthroughs in women’s health.

ARPA-H Medical Imaging Data Marketplace Network Survey and Report

In support of a joint effort by ARPA-H and the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the IC Hub issued our first network survey in March, seeking expert feedback to streamline access to affordable, high-quality, regulatory-ready medical imaging data at scale. Our network answered the call, and in August, we published the findings from the survey, which shared valuable insights from our network on data standardization, interoperability, security, affordability, and access, which can support ARPA-H in shaping programs and initiatives in this area.